Chapters What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you?
The air was thick and heavy with heat, and the weight of it clung to the fillies.
And still, they sat around the campfire. The three didn't even once think about complaining. To complain about the heat would be to complain about everything the heat wrapped in itself and kept tight. They'd have to grumble about the twilight birds singing their final encore of the evening and the crickets eating at the corners of the oncoming silence with a distant and rhythmic drone. Their smiles would have to be tempered from the smell of moss crackling in the firepit and the tiny hurricanes that blew through the grass and ruffled their tent.
In the quickly darkening field with jars full of fireflies and sugared snacks, their minds swelled with plans and ideas, cultivated by their unprecedented freedom. Tomorrow, they'd trudge back to Ponyville, which just now was only a collection of fuzzy lights and indistinct noises, and resume their lives as if it had never happened, but before they had even reached the campsite, the fillies knew this night would stay with them forever.
This was the night that the Cutie Mark Crusaders grew up and learned the world.
"Are you sure the s'mores are supposed to taste like this?" Scootaloo said after a bite of hers, holding the rest of it to the sky, silhouetted it against the dusky horizon. She turned it over in her hooves as if examining for any obvious imperfections.
"I'm positive," Applebloom said, "Look, if y’all don't like the way I made them, you can make them yourself next time."
"Nah, nah, it's okay. Forget I said anything." Scootaloo took another bite and chewed it for longer than normal. It tasted kind of like ash.
The two fillies sat quiet for a minute, Applebloom slowly spinning a marshmallow-speared stick above the fire. The sound of zippers and rummaging broke the sounds of summer twilight, and the tent behind them shook slightly every few seconds.
"Did you find it, Sweetie Belle?" Applebloom yelled in the direction of the tent.
"Not yet!" Sweetie Belle shouted back, her words as if she were speaking through a mouth full of cotton. "Are you sure your sisser packed it?"
"I'm positive," Applebloom said again. "Look, I told her we were gonna make a fire and she said make sure you don't go burning yourself and I said I wouldn't and she said she was gonna pack me some burn ointment just in case. You were there, Sweetie. That's what she said. It's in there somewhere. Didn't even think we'd need it but..."
"Come in here and help me look for it!"
"You're the filly who couldn't wait a second to eat her marshmallow!"
"You're the filly who made them hot enough to burn her," Scootaloo said in a voice that she thought was under her breath.
Applebloom turned towards her, and Scootaloo could have sworn for a second that underneath her friend’s scowl was a mouthful of nails ready to be spat out.
"Whaddya mean by that? S'mores are supposed to be hot, Scootaloo!"
"Yeah, sure, Applebloom. You realize that once Sweetie Belle's mom finds out we burnt her daughter's tongue, she's probably never gonna let us hang out with her again, right?"
"Well, that's easy. We just won't tell her," Applebloom grumbled, watching helplessly as the marshmallow melted around her stick and slumped into the fire, forever consumed.
Scootaloo gestured to the tent, attempting to speak through a mouth full of chocolate and graham cracker. After a few seconds of mumbling, she closed her eyes and pushed it down her throat. "You really think blabbermouth in there is gonna keep her mouth shut? You heard her mom go on and on earlier about her precious baby, not wanting her to go out alone, past curfew, couldn't we just camp in the backyard, maybe, blah blah blah. You know as well as I do that she's gonna tie Sweetie Belle up to a chair the second she gets home and quiz her on everything that went wrong."
Grunting, Scootaloo pushed herself off the ground and wandered over to the paper plate Applebloom had begun to crowd with the half-burnt remains of s'mores. She turned one over with her hoof and sifted through the rest. "If so much as a single poof of her mane is out of place she's gonna lock Sweetie in her room for the next few years. Goodbye Cutie Mark Crusaders. She almost had a panic attack when we first told her about this."
"Well, let's just run away, then."
Scootaloo stopped in place on her way back to the comfortable patch of dirt she'd chosen to lay in for the last hour.
"Are you serious, Applebloom?"
"Yeah, we'll just sneak back home, pack up some food and some other stuff, steal Granny's wagon and be off down the road. We'll hit up Manehattan and Baltimare and all the cities of Equestria. We'll travel the world," Applebloom made a wide, slow arching movement into the sky with her free hoof. "and experience it all...Cutie Marks and beyond."
Scootaloo stared at her, her heart beginning to race. Her breath came in slow, heavy sighs.
"Okay." Scootaloo tapped the ground. "We'll have to get started now, they're not expecting us back until evening. Let's leave notes, too, so they won't worry. But maybe we'll lie to them, tell them we're going some place we aren't and give us some time-"
"I was joking around, Scoots. We can't run away. Granny'd worry herself sick."
A needle stabbed deep into Scootaloo's heart. A sudden lifelessness.
"Oh."
Scootaloo collapsed on the dirt. For a few minutes, the only sound that she heard was the crackling of the fire, and all she saw was a wet, orange-red blur. Applebloom coughed, and put in another marshmallow on the sharpened stick.
Sweetie Belle burst out of the flap of their small, clown-colored tent, a white tube clenched between her teeth.
"Found it!" she cried, muffled, and spat the object at Applebloom's feet.
"See, Sweetie Belle?" She gave the unicorn a gentle bump on the nose. She flashed a smile at Scootaloo, but her friend was as stoic and indifferent as a statue. Withholding a sigh, she turned back to Sweetie. "I told ya my sister packed it. She's been camping all her life, she knows what to do."
"There was so much stuff in there it's like she planned on us being out here for a week!" Sweetie said, smiling, the pain of her burn apparently forgotten. "Mom forgets to pack my stuff for lunch all the time...it must be really nice to have such a responsible sister helping you out with everything, Applebloom."
Applebloom felt a familiar warmth creep up and through her. Her face grew hot. "Well, I suppose it's something. Not every sister's as nice as Applejack. Are you forgettin' Rarity sewin' up our sleeping bags, though? She's looking out for us too, in her way." She gently put the stick down and lifted the white tube from the ground. Sticking the cap in her mouth, she twisted the tube in her hooves.
"Yeah, I suppose you're right. I mean, I hadn't thought that she'd-"
"Open yer mouth, Sweetie," Applebloom said with the cap still in her teeth. "Lessee how bad this burn is."
Sweetie Belle opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. A smile was still twitching up the ends of her open mouth.
"I don't see anything wrong in here," Applebloom said, leaning closer and peering into the dark maw. "Are you sure you burnt yerself, Sweetie?”
Sweetie Belle mumbled something indiscernible through her open mouth. Scootaloo turned towards the pair of them.
"Alright, alright, hold out your tongue so I can fix ya right up," Applebloom said, spitting the cap out and holding the tube in a pair of shaky hooves as Sweetie Belle slowly extended her tongue. Sticking her own tongue out of her mouth and biting on it, Applebloom held out the tube, holding it over Sweetie Belle's face. Taking a deep breath and steadying her grip, she lined up the shot and prepared to squeeze a huge dollop of ointment in the middle of Sweetie Belle's tongue.
"You two aren't serious right now, are you?" Scootaloo picked herself up from the dirt.
"Whaddya mean?" Applebloom said. Sweetie Belle made a noise.
"What do I mean?" She walked over. "You can't put ointment on Sweetie Belle's tongue. Do you know what that could do to her? It could be poisonous or something."
Applebloom blinked at her, then brought her hooves back down to the ground. Sweetie Belle's eyes flitted back and forth between her friends, tongue still arched into the open air.
"Well," Applebloom huffed, "aren't you just little Miss-Full-Of-Lectures, tonight. How do you figure something like ointment is poisonous, anyway? Applejack wouldn't pack us anything poisonous."
"Applebloom, with the S'mores you've been trying to feed me tonight, I no longer trust your ability to tell the difference between something that's safe to eat and something that's not."
"Well, for one, Miss Smarty Pants, for the rest of the night, you can make your own S'Mores, and for two, if it's so poisonous, why doesn't it say anything on the tube, huh?"
"Probably because they didn't expect any fillies to be dumb enough to try to use it like toothpaste, Applebloom! Look, if you think Sweetie's mom is gonna throw a fit cause her tongue's a little bit burnt, then just think what she's going to do if we end up running back to Ponyville and taking Sweetie to the hospital! Or if we send her home and all of a sudden she starts puking everywhere! It's like I'm the only one here who realizes we have to go back to Ponyville and face our parents tomorrow!" She didn't know she was crying until she felt the tears on her cheeks.
"Ahright, ahright, calm down Scootaloo, I won't poison our little crybaby friend here."
"Hey!" Sweetie Belle said, finally snapping her mouth shut, then opening and closing it. "Now my jaw hurts."
Scootaloo brushed the tears out of her eyes then trotted over to Sweetie Belle and sat down next to her. "Oh look, already over the burn, huh? Shocker. The way you were crying a few minutes ago I expected your tongue to be burnt to a crisp now."
"Scootaloo..." Applebloom said in a way that reminded Scootaloo of an admonishing parent.
"Oh, come on Applebloom. Sweetie knows I'm just kidding around. Right, Sweetie?" Without waiting for an answer, she leaned over and gripped Sweetie Belle in a hug rough enough to make the unicorn squeal in surprise. They both started laughing. Watching them laugh into each other's ears, Applebloom slowly shook her head, smiling and chuckling softly herself.
"So," Sweetie Belle said once she had untangled herself from Scootaloo's grasp. Her burn now was truly forgotten, and Scootaloo wondered if the panicky filly would even be able to remember the wound come morning.
"What should we do next?"
The ponies knew that you had to do things during camping trips - there was an understanding developed through years of osmosis from legends, stories, and anecdotes from their relatives. Camping trips were exciting, like an adventure that didn't have to leave your tent. If the fillies weren't excited, it felt like they might have been somehow jilting the freedom they'd been granted.
"Oh, I know!" Sweetie Belle suddenly cried, her voice breaking from the excitement. The two other fillies, who'd been sitting in the silence, jumped at her screech. "I'll get the agenda!" Sweetie Belle bounced up from her seat and started marching back to the tent.
"Sweetie Belle," Scootaloo said.
The unicorn stopped, and looked at her.
"Forget the agenda."
"But..."
"Sit back down, and forget about the agenda."
"B-but my mom-"
“Sweetie, do you even know what the word agenda means?”
“What?”
“Just sit back down.”
Sweetie Belle froze, then stepped slowly back to her seat. Her mouth opened and closed, on the verge of protesting, then she plopped her rump back between her friends.
“What it means, Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo rose and began pacing back and forth. “What agenda means is that your parents are still trying to tell us what to do, even all the way out here. What it means is that Applebloom and I pretty much had to agree to be your mom’s slave for the rest of our lives to get her to let you come out here with us. What it means is that we’ve earned and we deserve this one night of freedom from all of that, from all the rules and from parents telling us what to do all the time.”
Scootaloo was grinning. The other two looked up at her, shifting slightly.
She stopped, and pointed at the tent.
“And what kind of a friend would I be if after all that...after all the work we’ve done, what sort of friend would I be if I let you take out an agenda that your mom wrote for you to keep her clammy hooves around you even if she can’t be here. I’m not gonna let you listen to your mom. You’re your own filly tonight, Sweetie! You can do whatever you want! We don’t have to have planned conversations about boring stuff! We don’t have to wait until ‘snacktime’ to eat! Isn’t that exciting? How can you not want to take advantage of it!?”
Scootaloo was breathing heavily as she finished. Applebloom and Sweetie were still staring wide-eyed at her, but their smiles matched hers now.
“Well, ain’t you feeling rebellious today, Scoots?” Applebloom said as Scootaloo fell back into place beside Sweetie.
"Always," Scootaloo said between deep breaths of the burnt air, "just now, there's no parents around to yell at me for it."
The girls listened to the crackling of fire for a while as Scootaloo caught her breath.
"Well," Applebloom said, "much as your speech is inspirin' and all, upliftin' for us oppressed fillies an' such, it still leaves us with the question of what exactly we should be doin' right now."
Fillies given a blank canvas are often lost when asked to start painting, Cheerilee's voice rapted in Scootaloo's mind.
"So," Sweetie Belle said, her voice dry. "What now?"
"Well...I was thinkin'..." Applebloom trailed off.
"Yeah?"
"An' feel free to give me a stern talkin' to if this doesn't fit into your idea of what our freedom for fillies campin' trip is supposed to be, Scoots..."
"'Course."
"Well...I think we're in agreement that we're the best and closest friends who've ever existed in all of Equestria." Applebloom didn't need to see the flurry of nods that followed to know her friends believed that with all their heart. "But sometimes...it feels like there are things we don't know about each other. Now, I'm not sayin' we've lied or anything...maybe we just haven't had a chance to talk about some things? I know I have some questions for you fillies."
Applebloom drank down a glass of ice tea as the other fillies stood rapt.
"So, I was thinkin'...we start sharin' secrets. That's something friends do, right?"
Immediately warm to the idea, Sweetie Belle grinned and nodded. Scootaloo brought her hoof up to her chin.
"Sounds pretty...I dunno, girly. Sounds like something your sister would do with Fluttershy or something," she said, nudging Sweetie Belle, "Now these secrets we're gonna be sharing...are they the type of secrets you'd keep from your parents? The kind you'd be afraid if they knew about?"
Applebloom nodded sagaciously, and spoke through a mouthful of marshmallow. "What kinda proper secrets would they be if they ain't?"
Staring at her friend in silence for a few seconds, Scootaloo slowly, against her will, felt a sly smile creep up her face.
"Alright, then," she said, leaning back. "Let's do it."
"So, who should go first?" Applebloom kept her eyes on her friends as her hoof fumbled around blindly at the plate of s'mores.
Sweetie Belle opened her mouth, then closed it again, and Scootaloo was silent, her thoughts moving faster than she could get ahold of them.
"Suppose it was my idea, anyway, I think it's fair that I go first?" The other two fillies eyes lit up, and their grins widened as they scooted closer to their friend.
"I think I got a good one to start us off. Not anything that's a big deal but..." Applebloom nibbled on the corner of a s'more, trying in vain to not make a mess of her mouth while she told her truth. "You know that stuff that adults sometimes drink? It's that stuff doesn't taste very good and we’re told we aren't allowed to have. I've heard it called a lot of different names by the folks in Ponyville, Applejack calls it 'Cider for grown-ups'."
Her face hardening and smile fading, Scootaloo gave a slow, grim nod at the same time that Sweetie Belle was shaking her head no.
"Well, anyway, the point is, we ain't supposed to be drinkin' it. One time Granny saw me tryin' to sneak a sip and she put me in the corner for a whole hour. Well, that very night," Applebloom quieted her voice and leaned in closer, the fire making diabolic shadows leap across her visage. They never knew when adults might be listening, even now. "That same night, not a day after I'd got done apologizin' to Granny and swearin' I'd never touch the stuff again, I sneaked out of bed when the moon was at the top of the sky. I knew where they'd kept the stuff, I'd seen Applejack get a bottle out often enough. So I reached in, took a bottle of this adult cider from the back of the cabinet, and whisked it off to the Clubhouse."
"You went to the Clubhouse in the middle of the night?" Sweetie Belle gasped. She held a hoof to her mouth, and Scootaloo would have thought she was pantomiming if she hadn't known the unicorn was about as self aware as a pile of bricks. "Wasn't it scary? There could have been monsters!"
Applebloom used the interruption to wolf down the last of her s'more, and waved off Sweetie Belle's concerns as she swallowed it. "'Course it was scary, so scary that Granny and AJ'd never think I'd wander there in the middle of the night. I'm a brave pony, though. That's what they don't know. And 'sides I couldn't have one of them catch me with that stuff, or my rump would be so sore I couldn't sit down without bawlin'. I've heard how much louder Applejack gets when she's drank some of that stuff, so I didn't wanna risk it."
Her hoof still covering her open, awed mouth, Sweetie Belle's eyes seemed to grow wider at each word. Scootaloo stared hard at Applebloom, the ash blowing in her direction making her blink more often than she'd like.
"Anyway, once I got to clubhouse, I decided I wasn't about to let that go to waste by being a little baby about it. So I started drinking it right there. It was something else, it tasted like cider's that's been in the sun too long. Kinda gross if 'in I'm being honest, but I managed to drink the whole gosh darned bottle right there."
Sweetie Belle started clapping her hooves in delight and giggled furiously. Scootaloo only spoke when, after a few seconds, she was sure that there was no more story to tell.
"Wow, Applebloom, I didn't think you'd have it in you. So what was this like? I can't imagine it was any fun. I know ponies who drink that stuff, and they don’t seem to have any fun. Should I be mad that you didn't think to invite your very best friends in the whole wide world to your little adult cider time?"
"Well, Miss Scootaloo, I'll have you know it was very fun and I'm planning on snatching up some more when I think Granny won't miss it so all of us can try it.”
Scootaloo glanced back at the fire, resting her head on one hoof.
“Yeah, I think Granny bought it cause I almost cried when I was first apologizin' to her, but she'll get suspicious if any more went missing. Drinkin' that stuff just made me feel sick at first, but then it started to feel...really weird. I can't explain it. It was like feelin' really dizzy or something."
"Dizzy?" Sweetie Belle's voice cracked in surprise. "Dizzy doesn't sound fun at all!"
Applebloom shook her head. "It wasn't dizzy like you've been spinnin' around a bunch or somethin'. It was dizzy like...almost like your brain was full of cotton candy or something like that. It was really hard to think about stuff, and I couldn't stop smilin'. It was making me tingle all over, everything seemed happy. I can't wait to try it again. I'm sure you girls'll like it."
Applebloom chuckled. "Least I'll say is that I know for sure why Applejack and Big Macintosh are so keen on grabbing a bottle each and locking themselves in his room every friday night. They must be havin' a ton of fun in there. Grown-ups get all the cool stuff. Even their drinks are better than ours."
"So Granny Smith never found out?" Sweetie Belle put a childlike amount of emphasis on the word 'never', as if she was responding to an unbelievable fairy tale that Applebloom was simply entertaining her with.
"Nope," Applebloom shook her head, "never. Least I never heard about it if she did, and I think I would. Though...I did spend the way back to the farm in the mornin’ makin’ sick all over the place. But it was worth it.”
The fire was cracking, and Scootaloo stared deep into it. She'd never had any of this 'adult cider' in the house, but she used to have drinks that were similar enough. If, one dark and conspiratorial night sometime in the future, Applebloom summoned them all to the clubhouse and unzipped her backpack, and against the speckled beam from her flashlight there was a glint of glass and then an illuminated bottle of dark liquor, Scootaloo didn’t know what she would do.
"Even the mighty Applebloom got sick from a little cider?" Scootaloo said, interrupting the subdued conversation between Applebloom and Sweetie.
"Listen here, missy, I'd like to see you try to drink some. You can have the whole bottle next time I manage to snatch some away from the farm. I told my secret and in my opinion it was a darn good one, so how about you quit yer ribbin' until its your turn, huh?" Applebloom waved the cindered end of the stick menacingly at Scootaloo, but her face was stretched with a smile.
Scootaloo let out an exaggerated sigh. "Well, my story is so awesome that it'll probably leave you fillies stunned for the rest of the night. I don't want to steal anyone's thunder, you know. So I think maybe Sweetie Belle should go next, for both of your sakes. Let's get the wimpy secrets out of the way first."
"Typical Scoots." Applebloom shook her head. "All bark, no bite."
"No." Sweetie Belle smiled, and inched closer to the fire. "It's okay, Applebloom, I think I've got a secret I'm ready to tell."
She was silent, and looked at the fire while her friends looked at her. Her chest was moving in the shadows of the flames - taking air in deep then exhaling silently.
"Sweetie," Applebloom said, putting a hoof on her shoulder. "You don't gotta tell us anything you don't want to. We're just messin' around here, if you ain't comfortable don't let Scootaloo pressure you into anything."
Scootaloo ignored the jab. "She's right, Sweetie, don't think you've gotta-"
"No, no," Sweetie Belle took a final deep breath and blew it out over the fire. "I've been meaning to tell you guys for a really long time, and I think you deserve to know. I'll feel better when I've told you. Honest."
"Take your time, Sweetie."
"Yeah, no rush."
"Okay..." Sweetie Belle licked her lips, and closed her eyes. "You know how sometimes we talk about boys and stuff and how gross they are and all that. And how we always agree that they have cooties and how we'll never ever like a boy even though our moms or sisters say that will change. Remember how we promised each other that we'd never let that change no matter what?"
Scootaloo glanced over at Applebloom, and the earth pony rolled her eyes.
"Yeah..." Scootaloo said.
"Sweetie, you don't mean..."
Sweetie swallowed. "I...girls, I...have a crush on Pipsqueak. I've been talking to him after school every couple days while you two were on your ways home."
Scootaloo and Applebloom blinked, and stared at each other.
Sweetie Belle still had her eyes closed, and her entire face was scrunched up. She was slouched, her whole body shaking.
"P-please don't hate me!"
Scootaloo and Applebloom were left speechless by Sweetie's confession, unable to find any appropriate words. Instead, their laughter rolled through the entire field, and echoed against the far trees of the Everfree.
Sweetie Belle's eyes snapped open, and the half-formed tears dried. She turned to Scootaloo and gave the filly a rough push. Already almost doubled over with laughter, Scootaloo's body barely budged.
"Girls! I can't believe you'd laugh at something like this!" Sweetie Belle's soft hooves beat on Scootaloo's torso, not even making a dent on the pegasus’s body. "I told you my deepest secret and you just...oh!"
No matter what Sweetie Belle did, the other two didn't cease, and eventually she just sat still, burning up with anger and embarrassment, a night long bawling and a sprint home just around the corner.
"S-Sweetie Belle, we ain't..." Applebloom said between gasps for breath, "we ain't laughing...at the fact you're crushin on little Pip'."
Scootaloo, still overcoming periodic fits of gentle giggling, leaned over and hugged Sweetie Belle. Sweetie was still shaking and silent.
"We couldn't care less if you and Pipsqueak up and got hitched." After Scootaloo finally stopped shaking with laughter and gave her a look, she continued, "Okay, well, maybe we'd care a little bit."
"Yeah, all that stuff with boys or whatever, no big deal, Sweetie. As long as you don't start dragging him to our Crusader meetings, you can do whatever you want. If you want to kiss a nerd like Pipsqueak and get his cooties, well, they're your lips."
"Hey!" Sweetie Belle sniffed back the tears after realizing she wasn't about to be ostracized from the Cutie Mark Crusaders for consorting with the enemy. A nervous smile played on her lips. "I think he's...cute, okay?"
"No accounting for taste," Applebloom said. Scootaloo nodded and patted Sweetie on the back like she was a poor lost puppy.
"What we were laughin' at, Sweetie," Scootaloo said, pulling her friend into a reciprocated hug, "was that you think something like that is a secret. That's about a much of a secret as Applebloom's bow is pink."
"Yeah," Applebloom said, "it's about as much of a secret as the fact that Scootaloo hasn't taken a bath in a week."
"Hey! My coat's not that dir-"
"Anyway, the point I'm trying to make, Sweetie, is that we both knew about your little meetins’ with Pipsqueak, we've both already talked it over with each other and decided if it makes you happy, then we're all for it. Just don't go spreadin' your boy germs to me or Scoots, and we'll be fine."
"O-oh..." Sweetie Belle had an ever changing flux of facial expressions, unsure exactly what she should be feeling right now, and decided that the most important thing would be not to cry. "S-so all that stuff about never being interested in boys, you think-"
"No, no, no," Scootaloo said, laughing. "Don't get us wrong, we still think you're completely crazy, but the only thing me and Applebloom can do is hope our little friend gets over this insanity soon."
"Anyway," Applebloom said.
"Anyway," Scootaloo repeated, "what's more important to both of us is the fact that is the lamest so-called secret you could have possibly thrown at us tonight. Applebloom and I are mighty disappointed, mighty disappointed. And I expect you to up your game a little bit before the end of the night. Remember, real, true, heart-pounding secrets. Not little schoolyard stuff."
"Okay," Sweetie Belle said, "I'll try my best!"
"Scootaloo, I think it means that's your turn," Applebloom said.
"Well, I'm not sure if that counts-"
"Girls?" Sweetie Belle interrupted, finally blinking away the last of mist crowding her vision, and breathing away the raw feeling the enveloped her coat. "I have an idea, if that's okay with you."
Scootaloo raised an eyebrow, and gave Applebloom a glance. "Sure, I mean. So long as it has nothing to do with you looking through the yearbook picking out coltfriends for us, I don't have any problems with it."
"Well, I was thinking..." Sweetie Belle said, "this whole telling secrets thing is a good idea but there's some things in particular I'd like to know about you girls so...is it okay if we ask some questions? We can still tell secrets, because, well...I have some stuff in mind that I don't think you'd want to talk about, anyway."
"Huh, that's not the Sweetie Belle I know," Applebloom frowned for a moment, but her expression quickly recovered to a smile, "...but I like it. That sounds like a great idea. Scoots?" Scootaloo nodded slowly, not sure about the direction this was taking but not prepared to halt the momentum of the night with any questions.
"Well, um, okay..." Sweetie Belle poked at the ground with a stick, idly drawing nondescript symbols in the dirt. "I was wondering...Well, I was wondering, what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you two?"
There was a jumpstart and bolt of sable lightning shot through Scootaloo's body and straight into her heart when she heard Sweetie Belle's words. First, Applebloom bragging about getting so drunk she threw up all over the place and now Sweetie Belle says this. There was something awful going on tonight and Scootaloo had no idea what it was, unable to decipher the conspiracy, not wanting to believe that something could ruin this night. Something inside her was tugged like a lawnmower cord - first, her heart stuttered, rumbled, and skipped a beat, then began loudly banging inside her chest, going faster and faster.
Sweetie Belle's question echoed in her ears, and carried with it a hold of other disorienting sensations. The smell of blackened vomit on the side of the moldy couch. The reverberating and slurred shouts that flowed through an empty home. Warm tears on young cheeks. The taste of running lipstick. Flinching away from other ponies touches, no matter how innocent, no matter how comforting. Pretending the bruises weren't there until she laid down at night and could pretend no longer, unable to stop the feeling of them against her spring-shorn mattress, unable to cry loud enough to not hear her own mother's sobbing join her an hour later, unable to stop the screaming of a broken household long enough to fall asleep. The feeling of waking up hungry and going to sleep hungry, and how the school's meals never tasted like the crumbling remains of cold cigarettes.
Blood dripping from broken glass, outlined in the moonlight.
The whimper began deep in Scootaloo's stomach. She could feel it running up her, through her, into her throat like bile and inescapably into the summer midnight, and not once at any stage did she feel the strength to stop it. Her only consolation was that she had learned to keep her involuntary complaints quiet. There was a time in her life when she couldn't let anypony hear them. The fireplace cackled loud enough to cover her.
Scootaloo hardly felt like Scootaloo anymore. It was like Sweetie Belle's words pulled her inside herself, and the Scootaloo she'd been pretending to be was just a shell over a frightened, mute filly that she'd been the entire time. Her friend's words were a trigger that caused Scootaloo to devolve somehow, and regress into something different, a filly she thought she shed a long time ago, a weaker filly full of stuttering and shivering. A damaged filly, broken into a million reflective pieces from an overwhelming pressure. A filly she hated, and never wanted to see again.
"...what?" Scootaloo said, without making the decision to, almost a reflex. She didn't know how much time had passed. It felt like an hour, but everything she knew about life so far had taught her that a blink could feel like forever if she was hurting bad enough.
"Wait!" Sweetie Belle cried, still smiling as Scootaloo stared at the flames. "No, no, no, let's do something else. I think Applebloom's story was really cool so we should do something like that...how about we tell each other the worst thing we've ever done?"
Scootaloo was silent, and blinked the ash out of her eyes. The feeling of fire on her face was somehow a comfort, and she'd rather stare into it for the rest of the night then turn to face her friends.
"The worst thing we've ever done?" Applebloom said, "what you mean like, disobeying teachers, actin' out against our parents and such like that?"
"Uh huh," Sweetie nodded, "stuff like that would work, of course. Stuff like what you just told us. But I was thinking that there's something more to, something that's not just about what your parents tell you to do...I mean, we've all been told dumb stuff by our parents and sisters that we disagree with and do anyway, so, it's not that big of a deal. I think I mean stuff that's like...really, really bad. Stuff we know we shouldn't have done, even long after we did it. Stuff we know is wrong. Stuff we regret. That's the kind of secrets I want to hear about."
"Huh. Interestin'." Applebloom tapped her chin a few times. "That sounds like it could get awful painful to bring up, if I'm understanding you right, and I still don't think we should tell each other stuff we ain't comfortable sharing."
"Oh, come on." Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes. "What's the point of telling each other secrets if we're gonna be all scared about it. Right, Scootaloo? That's what you were talking about earlier, right? This is supposed to be stuff we're scared to tell. We're the best friends in all of Equestria. Best friends are for secret sharing, right? I already told you guys something I thought would make you not want to be my friends anymore, and just cause you laughed at it doesn't mean...it wasn't hard for me to tell it."
"I suppose," Applebloom said, "You know, you're awful passionate about this, Sweetie Belle. Do you have something to confess that's been eatin' away at you, or something?" She grinned at Sweetie Belle, but seeing the unicorn's normally docile and oblivious expression twisted into a rictus of determination wiped the smile off her face in an instant. "I suppose we can do this, but we gotta promise that nothing we say tonight leaves this campfire, right?"
Sweetie Belle gave a cursory nod. "That's right. This is confidential Cutie Mark Crusader Secret Sharers. They’re still secrets, just now they'll be between the three of us."
"Scootaloo? Promise?"
The fire spun with color and sound, sending large embered fissures through the dry wood that the fillies had sacrificed.
"...Scootaloo? You okay?"
Sweetie Belle nudged her. "Scoots?"
"What?" Scootaloo snapped and rounded on her friends. "What? Sure, yeah."
"Scootaloo, you okay?" Applebloom stood up.
Picking up an errant stick, Scootaloo prodded the fire. One of the hollow limbs they'd use to sustain the flame rolled over and collapsed to the bed of the firepit, sending a fleeting shower of copper and gold sparks into the sky.
"Fine," Scootaloo said, hiding the word in a hardly audible grunt.
"Do you wanna tell a secret, Scootaloo? Something you regret?" Sweetie Belle said, trying to hold her smile and hoping it would infect her friend.
"Scootaloo, we’re talkin' at you."
"Hmm?" Scootaloo turned up from her lazy perforation of the firepit and at her friend. "What?"
"Well, Sweetie’s done with her secret, and I already told one of mine, so I think it's only fair that you go next." Applebloom said. "...ifin' you're feelin' up for it, of course. You ain't been actin' yourself all night. Are you sure you're okay?"
"Fine. I'm just fine, Applebloom. I can tell a secret, sure."
"It's okay, Scootaloo," Sweetie Belle said, "You're the toughest filly I know, I'm sure you're strong enough to tell us any secret you have, right? I'm a wimp and couldn't even tell you guys stuff without being scared, but I know you're not scared of anything." Applebloom nodded calmly behind her. Scootaloo's expression didn't twitch.
"The worst thing I've ever done, eh?"
"That's what we're going for!" Applebloom said.
“Yep!” Sweetie Belle said.
Scootaloo paused, resuming poking the fire. There was something about her voice that was empty, almost lifeless. Like she was continually distracted by something, or talking to somepony other than the friends she had sitting next to her. She lowered to the ground, and held her head between both hooves.
"...the worst thing I've ever done," Scootaloo mused aloud again.
"Alright...I'll tell you the worst thing I've ever done." Scootaloo took in a deep breath, and he friends scooched closer to her.
What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you?
Scootaloo's mom wasn't always as unrestrained as she found herself in Ponyville. Once, there was an arbiter in both her and Scootaloo's life that watched over every part of them from behind a blurry, defocused gaze that managed to convey an angry, jealous rage and scrutiny even through the bottom of a bottle. He was Scootaloo's father. Not being able to muster up the courage to do so, Scootaloo had never questioned her mother about her parentage - she never asked her mom if this stallion she called Dad was her real dad. Adoption was a no-no word in the household, and Scootaloo couldn't figure out why even after late-night brainstorming sessions with an adopted friend of hers from Ponyville.
No matter how hard she thought, no clear or crisp memories of her childhood remained in Scootaloo's mind. There were blurry images of unicorn stallions, a few fleeting memories of a collection of other ponies Scootaloo could only imagine were her mother's friends or suitors for her attention, but she had no idea who her real dad was. As soon as she was old enough to delineate today from tomorrow, and to remember yesterday, this stallion had been here.
She also couldn't remember if he had always been this cruel. At her young age, Scootaloo had already figured out the dangers of worshipping the past, and an inability to reminisce accurately if present circumstances were bleak enough to obscure. Miserable memories had a way of blacking out anything before them, and like a massive black marker, memories of her father storming around the house in a drunken rampage scribbled all over and hid underneath them any memories of him kissing her goodnight, reading her a story, welcoming her home from school. Even the thought of him leaning over her shoulder and whispering gentle advice into her ear as she fumbled around and scribbled ink on her mathematics homework only inspired the natural subsequent recollection of just how much his breath had smelled like cheap Cloudsdale Whiskey.
Sometimes, while she and her mother were curled up in bed, alternating between crying and comforting the other, she had asked her, why? Why does Dad act like this? Doesn't he love us? And her mother would fumble around words, her equivocation useless in the face of this innocent, wide-eyed pegasus who knew nothing of the world and even less of the types of ponies that populated its gutters and moral back alleys of Equestria. Scootaloo couldn't understand her mother's explanation. Even now, years later, as old as she was, somehow decades older than the ponies sitting across the campfire staring at her, she couldn't make sense of her mother's explanation. It was unsatisfying, somehow, knowing she could never get answers. Her mother had turned into a free spirit with her dad out of the picture, but there was still something that was forbidden in her house - mention of this stallion. Scootaloo would never know if there was a time that he loved her truly, or why her mother stayed with him for as long as she did, or why she smiled in family portraits despite the bruises that cropped up with alarming frequency all over her legs and her side. This stallion whose anger and whiskey-scented breath and vodka-muddled eyes would forever be a mystery to her, for the rest of her life she would never know anything more about him. She understood why she could never bring it up, and would be happy not to if only she had some sort of resolution. Maybe, if she had that, the nightmares she found herself waking up to on some dark nights would start to abate. It's possible that if her mother just answered her questions, laid everything on the table for her, she might be able to stand whenever her mom invited her friends over for a drink instead of fleeing to her room at the chemical smell of cheap alcohol, sobbing.
Back when she was younger, Scootaloo didn't know what was going on. She simply cried when her father began shouting, not understanding why he was mad. She held her trembling mother close and cried when she cried, not understanding why she was sad. As she grew older, she started understanding some of the words that were shot like bullets every night in the house, and she started to cry because she was caught in the crossfire. Scootaloo learned to hate her name - there wasn't once where her parents had a conversation about her that didn't end with her in tears, wishing she could run away.
There were days that Scootaloo tried to do anything she could to help. Days of cleaning an empty house, days she ended by collapsing in her bed, overcome with exhaustion and covered in dirt. Nothing made a difference as far as she could tell. Her parent's screams never became more quiet no matter how much she worked, and the last time she tried to stop them from fighting by shouting over them she was pushed onto her back and almost broke a wing. After that, it became her singular duty in the house to solemnly and steadily retreat to her room once her parent's conversations rose louder than a speaking voice, and to hold her head under a pillow until it was over.
Maybe, Scootaloo thought as she stared at the ceiling, all families are like this? Maybe this is just a part of growing up. She had no one to consult. She had a very difficult time making friends, and most of them could only endure a single afternoon at her home before the shouting and the posturing scarred Scootaloo's friendship. Besides, most of the time she hardly had time to make friends. With increasing frequency, as she grew older, Scootaloo was shunted from town to town across Equestria with a warning that consisted of a grumbled single sentence through a mouthful of food, or something that was shouted up at her after she was told to go to bed. Packed, moved, and stored about like so much luggage, Scootaloo was periodically picked up, carried to some other part of Equestria she knew nothing about, and thrown down upon arrival. There were always excuses but they lacked any explanation that soothed Scootaloo. Her father's "job", something to do with some obscure relative on her mother's side. Scootaloo never received an adequate explanation, but had long ago learned not to ask questions or to protest. She could scream when no one was around, but until then she had to be silent and submit.
It was hardest the first time, but like anything in her life it only got easier as the days went on. The first time, Scootaloo had held her childhood friends close, telling them how much she would miss them and how she might come visit some day. Her entire class, her constant companions since pre-school, threw a going away party for her. Her teachers told her how much potential she had, what a nice filly she was. Those are the types of memories that shone through brightest, thankfully. Most of her time at home was a blurry mess of amber and noise but memories of former friends and teachers were sharp.
She tried to fit into her new schools but it was impossible, and she soon forgot the desire. As a teacher would introduce her to a class, and she'd give a monotone, recited introduction about who she was and what she enjoyed doing, she knew that she would be among these ponies looking at her with emotions ranging from apathy to malice for maybe half a year at most - then she'd move on to another collection of empty faces. Her education was a broken mess, shards of lesson plans left embedded in her and carried from one curriculum to the next, some teachers pulling them out, others pushing them in. Educators would begin a sentence in one language and be speaking another by the time Scootaloo settled in a desk in front of his clone from another city. She didn't bother participating in class after the fourth move.
Teachers saw her as sullen and moody. She didn't get along well with other students, mostly content to ignore them. All the judgements in the world didn't matter to Scootaloo, and she cared about the notes her teachers sent home admonishing her excessive apathy and antisocial behavior almost as little as her parents did. As long as the police didn't show up at the door one night, Scootaloo soon realized that her parents didn't have a care in the world what she did with her life, and she felt liberated at that realization for almost a whole day before the feeling of emptiness sent her peeling back to her home in the hopes that just for once she'd be shown some attention.
Money was always tight with Scootaloo's family. Her father hopped from job to job that all involved him leaving early in the morning and stumbling through the door late at night. All of his jobs, somehow, resulted in him staggering around the house smelling exactly the same - a combination of excessive and pungent oil, the smell of a thick, dried sheen of sweat, and a throat burning odor of cheap spirits. When her mother wasn't unemployed, she worked a wide assortment of jobs, most of them lasting a few weeks. She'd cook for a restaurant one month, clean the house of an affluent pony the next, and fly packages around Equestria another.
Scootaloo's father complained about her mom's work a lot. It made up at least half of their arguments. For the life of her, Scootaloo couldn't figure out what combinations of circumstances would make her father happy - every new development seemed to upset him, and every relapse into a prior state seemed to make it worse. He screamed relentlessly about how many hours she spent away from home, not watching their kid, not cleaning, not cooking, not being in love with him. The times came around often enough that she did spent all her days at home, but that only made him angrier. He began to complain about not having enough money, then, or of supporting a whole family of lazy ponies. Scootaloo didn't know if the conversations varied as she grew older, because after a few years of hearing the same thing every single night her parent's voices became background noise of the creaking house, filtered out and hidden under sobbing or songs.
It was the alcohol, Scootaloo decided one day. That was the problem. Her father was okay - not affable but not abusive - if he hadn't been drinking that day, and every time things became really bad, he sweat the smell of cheap beer and walked in a palpable haze of cigar smoke. She barely knew what he was like without the alcohol, but it didn't take a genius to connect the proportions he consumed to the things he said, and the bruises he inflicted. The revelation fell on her, and it shook her awake. Some of her schools had had seminars of the dangers of alcohol, and every now and then there was an offhand mention of it by her teachers. Those were the few times in the class that she pushed herself up in her seat and listened.
Scootaloo brought this information to her Mother like it was classified, a whispered secret that contained their salvation. It was her Elements of Harmony, something that they just had to work through and achieve and the world would be completely saved, just like the myths. Her entire life she spent stumbling around a swamp but now finally the light was shining and she had something to trot towards. She could finally see for the first time in her life. Just imagining it was enough to make her giddy.
Her mother's lukewarm reception of her idea cooled her enthusiasm. She patted Scootaloo on the head and dismissed it, as if it wasn't the most exciting thing in her life. She acted to it with the same exhausted disconnected dead eyes that she used to look over anything Scootaloo did or proposed.
Until, that is, Scootaloo suggested that she talk to a teacher about it. After all, it was from a collection of disparate teachers that she had even managed to collage a solution to their problems. At that suggestion, Scootaloo's mom was alight with passion. She insisted, No, Scootaloo, you absolutely cannot tell anyone about this. If you do, it will be your fault that this whole family fell apart. If you tell anyone, Daddy will lose his job and so will Mommy, and we'll be homeless. You'll probably go to some strange family to be raised for the rest of your life, do you understand? Do not tell anyone, do you got that? After all I've done for you, after all I've begged with him for you whenever you've been bad, and you're just going to throw us in the trash by telling someone. Despite the fact that Scootaloo was sobbing hysterically before her mother had even finished chastising her, her mom forced her to promise that she wouldn't tell anyone what went on in the household every day. It was a secret hidden among piles of discarded heirlooms and scattered papers, behind the decaying couch bursting at the seams and under the half-eaten floorboards. A secret that no one could know, ever, for fear that Scootaloo might be rescued.
Fine, Scootaloo decided. That's fine. Fine. I won't tell anyone. I don't need any help. The teachers noticed the bruises every so often, but didn't bother asking most of the time, and the cursory excuses Scootaloo gave them satisfied their curiosity, and her constantly combative attitude didn't give most of them much reason to persist in their questioning. Some of them were insistent, though, in offering Scootaloo an ear or a hoof in any problems she was having - one even making the offer her very first day in class. Those were the times Scootaloo almost broke. The times that a teacher pulled her in after class and told her that she could trust him with anything, and even if she didn't have a trusting atmosphere at home, she could tell him anything and it would be a secret. Those were the times that she had to almost yell at a teacher to extract herself from the situation before she started bawling. Those were the times Scootaloo almost broke, but constant fears of living far away and never seeing her family again kept the confessions firmly stuck in her throat.
Some days, Scootaloo wonders what her life would be today if she had broke and told a teacher everything. She was worldly enough to know that while some of what her mother had threatened her with were lies to scare her, most of it had enough truth. She very likely would have been given to a new family in the hopes that they can repair the broken filly she had become, and stitch together some semblance of a normal pony from the tattered, jittery child they had been given. She would have very likely never met the pair of friends to which she was currently delivering a speech without inflection or emphasis while she prodded and disturbed the fireplace, bringing the embers intermittently to life. It was hard to imagine that even if that had occurred Scootaloo would have been any worse off, but you never know. Scootaloo's imagination went to some dark places.
Scootaloo thought she was doing good. She was going to fix her family, her father, and everything was going to be better. She was going to do it without the help of her mother or her teachers or any friends. She didn't know how, exactly, but at least she had a goal.
The true test came about much, much sooner than she would have liked.
What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you?
She heard the shouting before she even got on the porch. She had spent the evening away from home - flitting back and forth between a library and the park. Running was one of her favorite ways to burn off emotion and the feeling of empty, quivering limbs was always a decent distraction. As she approached the house, though, she knew that no distraction would work tonight. It was going to be one of those nights. No sense fleeing and trying to come back later - her parents would just as soon end their argument the second she walked in the door as carry it on until Celestia rose the sun. She took one deep breath, adjusted her backpack, and pulled open the door.
They were in the kitchen. That was part of why should could hear it outside, but the other part was that they were just extremely loud. They mostly fought in the living room, not out of any particular desire, but mostly because it was most convenient for them. It was where they usually were. Sometimes, though, their fights meandered to the kitchen, or originated there. After all, when complaining and arguments cannot wait, they had to make due with the location they had. And of course, there was a half-eaten dinner, complete with half-full glasses of wine and a half-full bottle of half-proof, half-price whiskey.
Scootaloo immediately fell into a familiar set of actions. It was a natural reaction to stimuli at this point. She silently closed the door and stared at the ground. She was a ghost, a specter of discontent glued to the walls and sliding on silent hoofs to her sanctum. She didn't say a word, didn't make eye contact, and all she had to hear was a handful of buzzwords screamed through the slurred mouths of her parents to know that this wasn't a conversation worth paying attention to. Words like "money", "job", and "bills" were all that her mind needed to hear to complete the rest of the pattern, and to know that no matter how long this conversation took place, it would proceed over the same well-trodden ground and reach the same familiar, unsatisfying end. Look at the ground, Scootaloo. Look at the ground. Don't make a sound.
She made her way around the other side of the table, perpetually as far from her parents as the perimeter of the room would allow. Just let it flow over you, Scoots. Let the words wash over your ears, and go no deeper. It doesn't mean anything. You can talk to them later, Scootaloo. Just go to your room. Don't say a word. A thousand protests were blooming in her chest but she kept them silent. That's one thing this environment evolved to an almost transcendental skill - the ability to suppress one's inner voice.
Scootaloo reached the hallway that led to the stairs, and once she was on the stairs it was a short climb to her bedroom. She was almost there. Silence. Solemnness. Submissiveness. The ground is beautiful, more wonderful than anything that moved or shook in her life.
There was a final shout from her father, then a single loud, snarl. The cracking sound of a hoof connecting with hard, unyielding bone echoed through the kitchen and shot through Scootaloo in a rush. Her mother cried out a desperate pitiful cry, something more suitable to an animal than a pony, the death groans of a withered creature, and Scootaloo heard a body crumple to the ground, all four hooves giving out at once and a frail body folding up like a doll and collapsing lifeless onto the tiled floor.
Scootaloo's heart raced so fast she feared her father would hear it. Outside, she allowed her face a single twitch, then took in a deep and silent breath, and everything was calm again. Her heart still shook, but her pulse was regulated. She had only missed a single step, only paused for the briefest moment, before resuming her ascent. She made it up to the top of the stairs, and still heard her mother sobbing on the floor below her. Inside her room, though, with the door closed, everything was quieter. Mechanically, she unloaded her backpack and organized her room, all with the same unreadable frown on her face, then collapsed into bed. There, staring at the dull white ceiling, she could finally let the tears come. They didn't last long.
She knew that tonight had to be the night she figured out if ponies could be fixed. Even if she couldn't rely on her mother or teachers or her friends. They might not have hope that everything will be fixed between her family, but Scootaloo still did. And tonight was the night.
She heard the door slam a few minutes later, and based on her father still screaming to the outside from the kitchen below her, she knew her mother had fled into the night. It wasn't something she usually did, but Scootaloo, for once, was thankful. It would make things easier for tonight.
Her stomach growled, but luckily she had been sneaking food from school and from downstairs whenever her parents weren't looking or wouldn't miss it and storing it in her room. She didn't need to - and didn't plan to - leave her room for the remainder of the night. The less attention she got tonight, the better. She would wait in her room, pray her father never thought of her, and pray that her mother didn't come back for a while.
The alcohol was the problem, right? Of course. Teachers warned against it. The meager studies she'd done recently in the library showed that alcoholism is a very serious thing and is caused by, no surprise to Scootaloo, alcohol. If she just got alcohol out of the equation, they could become a regular family. She just had to get rid of the alcohol. Her father wasn't a bad pony. He was just sick, and Scootaloo was going to be his doctor. Her mother told her that any outside help would destroy this family, so Scootaloo knew - there was really no other pony but her that could do this. It had to be her. She almost smiled. She wanted more than anything to fix this.
Her father wandered around the house for a while - his footsteps were audible, and his shouts echoed through the house. Luckily, Scootaloo didn't hear anything that indicated he was talking to her.
It was a few hours of deathly silence, interspersed with the sound of hacking coughs and groans. The sun finally set and the whole room grew dark. Scootaloo remained staring at the ceiling, a silent listener. She didn’t bother turning on her light.
This was the most frustrating part of it. The waiting. After what she had seen, the waiting was almost unbearable now that she finally had a solution.
As he had every day, her father stumbled up the stairs long after it had grown dark. For a brief, terrifying second, Scootaloo worried that her ruse would be seen, and that, in a moment, the door to her room would slam open hard enough to bent the hinges and splinter the frame, and her father would storm through the threshold, rushing her in an incomprehensible anger, screaming words at her she couldn't understand. Scootaloo hugged herself hard and shook, but her fear was unnecessary - after a loud, echoing trot to the bathroom, he stumbled into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him. Scootaloo didn't hear much after that. Her breathing was deliberate and regular. She didn't put it past her dad to lie in bed for a bottle for another few hours, listening. She sometimes tried to sneak out of her room when she thought he had gone to sleep but was caught and ordered back to her room by a slurred command and under the beady gaze of hazy eyes. Her father sometimes let it known that he was still awake through the loud, heaving sobbing he embraced when he thought he was alone.
Tonight wasn't those nights. The erratic grumbling and shifting Scootaloo heard through the wall to her father's room could have belonged to a stallion sipping at his last glass of whiskey and moaning babbles of discontent at the world, or it could be the involuntary dreamtalk and creaking springs of a fitful sleep. What Scootaloo planned was very very risky. If she was caught, she didn't know what would happen to her - she had had to dodge a hoof coming down at her face for things like coming home five minutes late, or things she was wholly innocent of. If his retribution was capricious even in the best circumstances, Scootaloo didn't want to imagine what it would be like if she was actually doing something that she knew deep in her that she shouldn't.
The hours passed, and Scootaloo was silent. The speckled ceiling stared back at her. Ponies talked outside her window, congregating into small groups in the cold night, their silver breathing loud and happy. And Scootaloo was still silent. The moon rose in the sky. The night gradually cooled in passion and tempers and everything was quiet, and Scootaloo too. Time passed. Each creak of the house might have been her mother coming home, her father stumbling into the bathroom. The lamps outside flickered occasionally, and each time Scootaloo had to suppress the urge to leap to the window and pull the curtains back. For once, she feared the sun. She could only wait so long. Somehow, she knew she had to act tonight. Tonight was her hypothesis, her proof of concept. The conditions were ideal.
Having memorized long ago where the loose floorboards peppered her floor, Scootaloo crept silently around them, slithering in between the danger and making it to her door after a few minutes. Her body was tense, permanently crept up and ready to spring, all of her muscles already exhausted from strain, and her mind focused only on noise.
Opening her door felt like it took hours. Each time the rusted hinges creaked, she stopped, winced, and waited. Eventually, it was open enough for her to slip through, and she snuck into the dark hallway, shutting the door behind her just as gently as she opened it. It was all or nothing, now. If her father was awake. If her mother came home. Scootaloo couldn't stand to think about that.
Her father's room was right down the hall. These floorboards - Scootaloo wasn't quite as familiar with them as the ones that made the maze in her room, but she had studied enough that she could negotiate the trouble spots. The hallway was almost completely bathed in an impenetrable darkness, but Scootaloo knew her way around. She'd wandered to the bathroom in the darkness often enough.
She reached the wooden door that barred that way to the inviolable sanctum that was her father's room. She couldn't remember the last time she'd ever seen the inside, much less actually entered it. Parts of it were parts of her nightmares - the sounds she heard come out of there sometimes late at night, sounds like her mother crying but not quite, somehow different - the smell, like a huge vat of dirt and dark liquors. She didn't need to be told that she could never go in there - it was intuitive - and until tonight she never had a problem with that stipulation.
She reached a hoof up to the doorknob, and let it sit there. It wasn't too late. If she heard her father stomp around in his room, she'd still have time to flee back to her room, or into the bathroom under the facade of using it. She might still get in trouble, but it wouldn't be anything compared to the bruises she'd get if her father caught her in his room.
If opening her door noiselessly took hours, then turning the knob of her father's took a millenium. A thousand thousand suns and moons passed overhead as Scootaloo clenched her eyes shut, scrunched her face, and listened to the grinding of the mechanisms. The door latch slowly releasing. Any second now, her mother might come home. Her father could be awake in there. Do not think, Scootaloo. Just act. Do not let your heart beat. Calm. Slowly. In and out.
The door slid open. Any second, she expected a trap, an alarm to be triggered - her father to come rushing at her, a massive dark form of muscles smelling of whiskey and sweeping through the threshold and tackling her to the ground. An inch at a time, less than an inch, a hair of her coat at time, tiny, tiny micropushes that slowly and silently compelled the door open until, again, there was just enough that she could slip in and shut the door behind her. The sound of her father's voice would set off the springs that by now made up her muscles and would have her shooting out of the room. She'd run mindlessly. She'd run away into the night and keep running until her legs gave out, she'd run forever. There was no sound like that. Scootaloo couldn't even hear her own breathing.
He snored. It was loud and staggering, like he was having a hard time breathing. Scootaloo's heart stopped dead in her chest. Silence. Blinking would be too loud. She stared into the darkness.
A thin stream of moonlight fell through an disheveled curtain and gave Scootaloo some sense of the room. It was a chaotic mess, a secret part of a secret life that Scootaloo didn't have hope of deciphering. Empty bottles littered the floor, some collected in a corner but most knocked on their side, scattered around the room and on the desk and around the bed like confetti, abandoned where they fell. There were stacks of books jutting out of shadowy corners and from behind chairs - dusty piles that looked like they'd fall at any second, and yet somehow seemed to have been stuck in place for years. Notebooks and pencils dotted the floor, too, trapping in them scribbles that ranged from methodical to the ramblings of a madman.
The room smelled too - no surprise that it smelled to Scootaloo like her father's breath concentrated into a cologne. There were other smells, too. The smell of grease and urine. Grime, dirt, mildew. Her mother wouldn't have abided this filth if it was in any other room, but she knew enough to know her mother wouldn't – couldn't – complain about this room. The nights that her parents actually slept in the same bed were so few and far between, anyway, that Scootaloo figured mom didn't have to see much of this room. It was choked with the smell, dust hanging in the thin film of light that streamed through the window. It was like a dusty attic that hadn't been exposed to the outside in decades. Scootaloo chastised herself for not taking in a deep breath of the air outside before entering.
There he was - laying on his unadorned, unsheeted bed, sprawled on that empty, moldy mattress that resembled a series of broken, moss covered hills. Save for his stomach, which rose and fell erratically, he was comatose and still. The work clothes that he wore almost habitually clung to his fur, saturated and matted with sweat. He was laying on his back, limbs motionless and splayed wildly, and every now and then he let out a staggered snort that Scootaloo could only assume was his snoring. Nothing about him was how ponies were supposed to be. His coat was dull and flaky, his mane a ragged collection of oily clumps on his bed. If his eyes had been open, they would have been lifeless and jittery. The palpable feeling of disease inundated every part of his body. He was like a sleeping corpse. Scootaloo supposed that was appropriate, after all. He was indeed a very, very sick pony. And Scootaloo was going to take the first step towards fixing that, tonight.
After standing silent by the door for what must have been an hour, Scootaloo felt confident enough to make a movement. Her heart had stopped skipping a beat every time her father sucked in air violently and hacked it out in the rigors of snoring. She traced out a proper path through the room a hundred times, running it over and over again in her head. She needed a safe path that avoided all possible obstacles and carried her to her destination - the half full bottle of spirit that rested beside the bed. Her father's conquest of the night, partially finished. She needed to get her hooves on that bottle.
She ran the path through her head again. And again. A mental trace around the books, between the papers, tiptoeing through the jagged brown bottles like they were landmines. Slow. Steady. Safe. She ran it through again, following the path with her eyes and then following it backwards.. And again. Another time, but now, she closed her eyes and let her feet follow her mind. She was still going through it in her head, that's all. No need to panic. No need for her heart to race as she silently and blindly dodged a dozen obstacles that potentially meant the end of her life. Her father's breathing grew close enough to hear, and it was as stunted and irregular as the rest of him.
Scootaloo was close enough that the smell of sweat and liquor leaking from his body was pungent to the point of making her closed eyes water. Still, she felt a strange and unfamiliar desire to give him a kiss. Maybe it was finally figuring out that he was just sick and like any sick pony just needed some help. She used to want to choke him. She used to feel something under her skin that made her want to scream and hit things whenever he was around. Now, she just felt pity.
Scootaloo opened her eyes. He stirred softly in bed, grumbling then rolling over. Scootaloo didn't want to risk smiling yet, but she felt something hopeful sprout inside her as she leaned over, clenched the neck of the bottle between her teeth, and lightly backed out of the room in the same way she entered. Her father didn't say a word to her and didn't stir in her direction. He knew nothing.
When Scootaloo was outside of her room, she took a few breaths in and out. Almost immediately, the urge inside her was to scream her success, and leap into the air. For once, she wanted to smile. Every external part of her was still as silent night, but inside there wasn't a nerve that didn't want to dance. She took a deep breath of the cold air in through her nostrils. Each time she lifted a hoof and set it down blindly in a place she knew was safe, she had to resist the urge to break into a sprint back to her room. Part One of her operation was a resounding success, and might have indeed been the most difficult part. She couldn't afford to get excited now. Suppressing emotions was something she'd practiced her entire life. Only one more night of it, and tonight it mattered more than ever.
Slowly, she paced back to her room, trying to keep the bottle still so the liquid inside wouldn't slosh around. Once outside her door, she turned the knob even more slowly than before, the glass object stuck in her mouth obscuring her concentration. The door opened silently, and she slipped back into her room. As gently as possible, she set the bottle on the ground. It connected with a small clink, and Scootaloo froze. Waiting. No other sound. A bird cried far in the distance, and finally, mercifully, the sound of her father's gasping snores sounded through the house. Scootaloo finally allowed herself a small smile.
Needing some light, Scootaloo risked trotting over to the curtain and pulling it back, allowing the moon into the room. It wasn't much, but it was all she needed for now. Not as if she could risk lighting a lantern or using her flashlight at this stage, anyway. Picking up the bottle after taking in a deep breath, she carried over to a illuminated, pale-white spot on her floor and sat down with the bottle in front of her.
These containers inundated her life, but this was the first time she had ever seen one up close, and the first time she had an opportunity to inspect it. As she turned it around in her hooves, the dark golden liquid inside moved just like water. For some reason, Scootaloo thought that it would be somehow more viscous like a slow dripping molasses that clogged lungs and throats. The label was sparse, not having much more than the name of the liquor - Cloudsdale Lightning - and a collection of abbreviations and percentages that Scootaloo couldn't make sense of. Her milk carton at school had more information than this bottle. She frowned. Well, it looked like she wouldn't be getting much information from the bottle. That's one task she'd have to mark as incomplete after tonight, but there were others she had to perform.
Holding the bottle tight with both hooves, she bit on the cork stopped in the neck of the bottle, and pulled hard. It came loose with a pop that was entirely too loud, so once again Scootaloo became a statue and took in the sounds of the night.
The smell wafted from the bottle and permeated her room. Her nose twitched, repulsed, and she leaned forward and took a small sniff near the rim of the bottle. Yes, it was there - a concentrated and impossibly potent version of the odor that all through her life had carried noise and shouting, insults and berating, empty rage on the sharp wings of the burning smell. She winced, and pulled away from the bottle. Reading the books over and over had planted the idea and prompted her internal speculation, but right now this proved it to her more than anything ever could. Poison. This stuff was poison. In the tentative itinerary for the night that she'd jotted down in her head, she had even made plans to taste the liquid for herself, but those were quickly abandoned. She felt a strange sort of respect for her father in the light of this new revelation - no weak pony could stomach something like this on a regular basis.
As quickly as she could, she placed the cork back in the neck of the bottle, and pushed it back in with her hoof. Okay. That was enough testing for now. Her plan was ready to go. She'd go downstairs, dump this deadly stuff out in the sink, and get rid of the bottle in a hidden place. That way, her father wouldn't be able to drink first thing in the morning and Scootaloo could at least see if anything changed. She was confident her father wouldn't notice or comment on the missing bottle - after all, while he was drinking this stuff, he misplaced so many things and forgot so much that was much more valuable that Scootaloo knew she would be safe if she wasn't caught tonight.
Then she'd do it the next night, maybe. And again. Slowly, she'd get rid of his poison. She'd watch it swirl in the kitchen sink and down the drain. She'd pour bottles into the gutter. She'd dye the snow of the yard amber, gold, and wooden brown. She nourish the cobblestones with wine and break the glasses against brick. She'd empty bottles into her own throat if she had to. Her father would be furious at first, but she'd practiced years of evading his wrath. Over time, he'd get better. The less he drank, the better he'd get.
Any second, her mother might stumble into the house, but she was far too deep in to quit now. Regulating her breathing and calming herself back down took a few minutes, but afterwards she was ready to continue. She stood up, picked up the bottle with her teeth, and snuck over to the door. Once again, she opened and it just enough to sneak out, but this time a little quicker. She was comfortable now in her secrecy. Her mind was already on the kitchen sink and watching this bottle chug out its contents into a swirling and quickly disappearing mass by the time she reached the stairs and put the first hoof on a step.
She didn't notice the noise coming from the bathroom until her father stepped out into the hallway.
Hearing the stumbling, Scootaloo turned to look at the noise instinctively, the presence and danger of it not even registering in her mind until a second later. There he was, breathing heavily, a slightly swaying misshapen mass silhouetted in the darkness. It was as if she had turned to stone under his gaze, and she could do nothing but stare at him. Maybe, maybe he didn't see her. Maybe it was too dark and he was disoriented and maybe he would just stumble back into his room but no he was looking right at her past a sheen of exhaustion and inebriation, staring right into her eyes with the beady, bird-like glare of his own. He let out a sound that was more a growl than a word, and stepped towards her.
"What the f-"
She opened her mouth to scream, to answer, to take her last breath of her life and when she did the bottle tumbled from her grasp, landing on the step and bouncing to the next, rolling over and down and clanking with the steps while Scootaloo stood there, all the blood in her frozen still and her heart pounding with each thump. When it finally fell to the bottom of the steps and smacked against the hard floor, it broke into a million pieces with a shatter that echoed through the house. The wet shards sparkled in the moonlight.
Scootaloo didn't know how much time passed with her eyes locked on the bottom of the stairs where the broken bottle stained the floor. Her heart beat so fast that it felt on the verge of fluttering out of her control, and her father's raspy breathing felt like it was all around her, everything she could hear was that shuttering weeze through a thin throat decayed and aberrated by poison.
Escape. The thought of running made her limbs twitch, but the compulsion didn't move beyond that. The bottle, despite her constant and fevered willing, wasn't empowered to reform and float back up the stairs. Her father, despite all her prayers, didn't march past her with a nonconscious grumbling and collapse back in bed, convinced nothing he had seen was real. And most important of all, Scootaloo didn't suddenly open her eyes to bright room and chirping birds, stretching her muscles and shaking away the strange, terrifying dream of which should already only remember faint whispers.
Suddenly, Scootaloo felt very small - a foolish child who'd attempted things far beyond her ability or comprehension, and now the time had come for retribution. Her transgressions would be redressed. Her father coughed loudly from some unseeable beyond, and Scootaloo swallowed. Her cheeks were already warm and wet, and the rest of her body was cold.
Her father mumbled something, coughed, and took in a deep breath. “...you little..." he growled, and rushed towards her at a speed she didn't think he was capable.
She screamed. She thought she was a brave pony but she was nothing more than a filly now, she knew. At the sight of this stallion stumbling towards her, this stallion who could crush her under his hoof, this stallion who had almost broken her limbs and her wings before, the stallion responsible for the bruises that hid in abundance under the wispy white and dying coat of her mother, she could do nothing but scream, and scramble down the steps. Her father had threatened to kill her before. Death threats were nothing new in her household - Scootaloo heard them flung at and by her parents daily. All it took was the slightest glimpse of her father's face, a flash in the darkness, empty and pitiless eyes and a scowl, to know that tonight there would be no restraint. He had lost whatever sense of disapprobation had prohibited him from acting on his threats in the past, and Scootaloo knew that if she stood still she would never see morning. She had to flee. Flee and find her mother. Something. A neighbor. She'd never come back to this house.
As Scootaloo scrambled down the steps as fast as she could move, she heard her father clammering after her, his hoof-falls erratic and jarring, making the whole shoddy staircase tremble under his weight. All Scootaloo could consider was the door. The night. Escape. One hoof over the next, able to concentrate on nothing else. Her father stumbled behind her, but whether the sounds he made were involuntary gasps and heavy breathing or further muttered insults and curses, Scootaloo couldn't tell.
One misstep was all it took. She stumbled on one step, tried to slow down but missed the next one completely, then fell. She tumbled down the stairs just like the fatal bottle had done, her body cracking and slamming on each step. Her wings buzzed futilely in the air each time she stumbled upright, desperately and against all odds trying to find purchase in the air and carry her away from her forever. Finally, the fall came to an end as she smacked with a solid and wet thump against the floor. Every part of her body was sore, and when she tried to move her limbs and found them unresponsive, she feared for the slightest moment that her body had broke into pieces as violently and as assuredly as the glittering bottle that lay scattered next to her.
Before she could think any more, before she could breathe, her father was on top of her. Almost as if he had teleported to her weakness, suddenly he was just there. Scootaloo was on her back and her father clambered clumsily on top of her, his massive body crushing hers under its weight. While before he had seemed atrophied and lifeless, now that he had something to animate him it was like she became an entirely new pony. Scootaloo had never released how strong and heavy he was. She tried to scream, but her lungs were too weak, and her spirit too empty.
His breath blew in her face and smelled rotten and deadly, a cloud of caustic vitriol that felt like it was eroding her face. She was entirely paralyzed under her father's weight - she could finally feel her limbs responding, but her legs simply fluttered pathetically under his weight.
"I knew I..." He slurred out words made of messy syllables, half-sentences and half-thoughts given stuttered life in his anger. "You..."
Scootaloo mouthed an apology, trying as well as she could to blink away the tears. No sound came out. Her hindlegs beat the ground under his body, and he didn't seem to notice.
A clumsy pair of hooves reached up along Scootaloo’s motionless body and found her neck. They pushed down and together. The air in the room seemed to grow suddenly thin, and Scootaloo’s chest had trouble rising and falling. Darkness seemed to creep around her father's face, growing from the periphery and obscuring her sight, but through the haze she still managed to make out the sight that she woke up to, screaming and sweating, every other night - piercing through the encroaching darkness, her father's beady, angry, black pupils stared down, but not quite at her. They were looking at something above her, past her, something through her, as if her father couldn't be bothered to pay attention to her. The object of his gaze was lost and unfocused. He was distracted while his hooves clamped around her neck. His anger was directionless. Gone forever were the kind eyes that once, once upon a time, maybe, watched over her. The stallion that once loved her had been drowned, poisoned, and died.
First, her forehooves reached up and raked at the ones choking her, trying to pry off the stallion's grip. Her body spasmed in the effort, every slowly-weakening muscle of her body thrashing against the captor pressing her in the floor, every piece of her contorting to wedge her body loose and escape his grasp. His hooves didn't budge, and his mouth was thin, expressionless, and terrifying. Sweat made his coat clammy and his snout shined from it. "Little bitch, I can't..." he muttered, his mouth mimicking the rest of the sentence, talking more to himself than anypony.
"You're...s-sick," Scootaloo gasped, and as those words left her mouth they felt like they might be the last she ever said. Her father didn't respond, verbally or physically. She wasn't talking to a pony, anymore. She might as well have been conversing with a mindless creature.
Scootaloo's hooves fell back at her side. A natural instinct of her body took over, and she started taking in deep gulps of air, sounding like a broken, sputtering toy as she clung to whatever she could find through her throat. Her father shifted on top of her, and she could barely feel it - sensation was slowly leaving her body, breathed out in the last of her frantic, gasping breaths. She tried to breath through her nose, somehow thinking that would work, but the air she took in was even thinner.
Her father was still muttering on top of her, nothing in his eyes showing compassion or concern. Not even a blink to hide what he was doing from himself. There was no doubt in Scootaloo's mind, now. He meant to kill her tonight.
Her forehooves animated again through concentrated effort and shot upwards, pushing against his chest with all the might she could muster. And still, it did nothing. Merely inconvenienced, her father adjusted himself so he was sitting on Scootaloo's stomach instead of laying on her chest, concentrating his weight and crushing her even more. Any second now her bones would snap under the pressure, and her neck would cave in and twist unnaturally and her head, once full of fleeting ideas about poison and rescue, would dangle and flop from her lifeless body. She was sure of it.
Overwhelming her, the darkness became too thick to see any further. Her hooves fell again to her side, limp and lifeless. She closed her eyes. Everything had gone wrong. A sensation that was the absence of heat but wasn't quite cold washed over her body, starting at her still twitching legs and pulsing with each quiet, dying heartbeat through the rest of her body. She wasn't able to feel anything all over. Every sense amalgamated into a palpable and impenetrable white noise. Her father's hooves around her neck felt like nothing now - a lack of thought and sensation, something that was impossible to care about. There was always the chance that she'd have nice dreams, she hoped.
Beside her, her convulsing hooves, ebbing with the final throes of life, found something that reminded her of her sense of touch. Her hoof ran across a shard of sharp glass, and she felt it cut her. Her eyes opened slowly. Above her was the monster. Opening her mouth, she attempted one last entreaty, and to this day she didn't know what, if anything she said, or if her father had heard her.
Leaning over, both hooves fumbled at this piece of sharp, soaked glass, smearing it with thin streaks of her blood. She dropped it on the wet floor, the piece slipping out of her grasp as her numb hooves were unable to find a proper grip. Finally, though, she clasped it between her forehooves. Her father made no sign that he took her fumbling for anything more than desperate struggling.
Scootaloo took the deepest breath she could manage, closed her eyes, and thrust the piece of shimmering brown glass hard and up into her father's chest.
She held it there, unable to do anything else with her body, unable to think. A warm, viscous dampness flowed onto her hooves and dripped onto her chest, quickly becoming a small, steady stream.
"Fuck...what di..." His voice was slurred and weak, and his breath smelled as strong as ever. Stronger somehow, somehow more colorful.
The grip around her neck slowly weakened. Immediately, Scootaloo took in a giant breath, and despite the smell of iron and poison permeating the air, she quickly took in another one. The taste of that air would never leave her. She drank lakes of it in her dreams, and woke up with it on her tongue.
After a few gasps, Scootaloo had the energy to do two things. The first was to resume her hysterical sobbing, and soon she was gasping for air again and shaking from tremors of fear. The second was to push her father off of her. The stallion didn't resist, and Scootaloo pushed him as hard as she could over her side. His body rolled off and onto the pile of crushed glass, crashing down on it with the sickening sound of a thousand punctures. In the moonlight, Scootaloo saw his body vibrating and twitching, and saw his eyes - finally, finally not angry, but frightened, confused, wide-eyed and blinking frequently, passionately - staring down at his chest. The coat of fur below his neck was dark red with blood and the color spread, forming a steadily growing shape that bloomed from his chest. His hooves, smeared with crimson, brushed slowly and awkwardly over his chest, as if they were trying to clean it, trying to scrape away a bug, brush the pain away. He was silent, though. The only sound in the night now was Scootaloo's sobbing and her hoofsteps as she scrambled back up the stairs.
She raced into the bathroom, her hooves scrambling and skidding across the floor as she burst into it. After she flicked on the lights and hopped onto a stool, she twisted the silver handle and ran her hooves under a cool jet of water. The liquid in the sink turned a dark, sick pink color, the color of flesh after you cut away a few layers. Her hooves rubbed against each other for what felt like an eternity. Still sobbing, she quickly ran out of breath, and great, heavy heaves for air echoed through the bathroom until she had regained enough to resume bawling. It still amazed her that no one heard her wailing that night. All it would take would be one curious neighbor and she would not be sitting with Applebloom and Sweetie Belle tonight.
Once her hooves and limbs were sore and raw, and the chill of the clear water was making her shiver all over, she finally dared to look up at the mirror. Staring back at her was a trembling face specked with dots of red dangling on the tips of her coat. A pair of bloodshot, puffy eyes blinked at the sight. Her lip quivered, and her whole body shook when she took in another gasp. She couldn't stand staring at this filly for another moment. Diving down to the sink, she splashed water all over her face and scrubbed viciously, first with her hooves, then a towel that she managed to gather up the clearheadedness to retrieve.
Every part of her wanted to shut the door to the bathroom and stay there for the rest of her life. Scootaloo was soaked all over, the wet towel lying crumpled under her as she poked and pushed at her neck, trying to make sure everything was still working. All over, she ached. It was like falling out of the sky but worse and hitting much deeper than any sort of impact should be able to.
The bathroom door had a lock, but Scootaloo was having trouble standing to use iit. Any second, she was sure that she'd hear her father groan and stumble up the steps in search of her, intent on finishing what he had started. Each breath she took might have been her last, and something about the lingering taste of soap and disinfectant mingling with the scent of blood made her almost wish that each one was. If only she had opened a window before collapsing onto the ground.
As the hours, days, weeks, passed, the possibility of her father returning to administer his revenge became less and less likely. It was possible he had already stumbled up to his room without Scootaloo hearing it - she had been sobbing in the silence for so long that she feared it was the only sound that existed anymore. Maybe he had simply passed out at the bottom of the stairs, or gone to get help at a doctor's or something - Scootaloo’s blood-soaked hooves convinced her he must be very hurt.. Or maybe he realized that Scootaloo was too much for him, and he decided to pick himself up and leave forever, just wander out the door into the rising sun and never show his empty eyes around her again.
Soon, another concern settled in Scootaloo's mind - her mother. Regardless of how long her father was gone or incapacitated, her mother would be home before long - these nocturnal exodi never lasted much later than dawn, anyway. When she saw the mess that was the bottom of the stairs, she would be furious. There was a chance that, if her father was departed, she could rush down and clean up the mess before she arrived. Then, when she saw her father again, he might have forgotten the whole thing, maybe - he's forgotten so many other things he'd done while poisoned, after all. Perhaps if Scootaloo just pretended this never happened, she could go back to the life she had had a few hours ago. It wasn't perfect, but back then the only things choking her were the smell of alcohol and a her own self-repression.
A door slammed far in the distance. Scootaloo was silent, save for the occasional sniffle. No sound answered her investigation. The house was dead.
She rose on wobbly legs, and stumbled past the bathroom threshold. Her bed seemed so tempting right now - she would have loved to collapse back into it, and the ache in her limbs told her that if she did, she would be there for a very long time. Whatever she did, she didn't want to look down the stairs as she walked past them. She couldn't. Her eyes were clenched shut.
One peeked open.
Then the other. She turned and stared down.
He was still there. His body, absolutely motionless. A black, shapeless mass, immobile in the fading moonlight. Scootaloo stared, as deathly still as he. His limbs didn't twitch. His chest didn't rise. He lay there, his limbs sprawled in awkward shapes, unmoving in the thick puddle that spread all around him, the colors of amber and crimson that tinted the ever-stained carpet. Under him and between his limbs, the broken shards of glass still speckled like seashells on a black seafloor - little glimpses of light spreading out and sparkling in the darkness.
Too much time passed. She couldn't take her eyes off of it. Any second, she expected him to snore or snort loudly, just like before. She couldn't decide what she would do if he did, or if she even wanted that. Whatever her desires, her father responded with silence.
Scootaloo felt a shout bubbling in her, threatening to be released. Before it could, and before the cloud of tears in her eyes could overwhelm her, she galloped back to her room and shut the door soundly behind her. Inching up to her bed, she clambered on top and under the worn, patchwork blanket. Hidden from any light and sight, she was quiet for a very long time. Her hooves occasionally rubbed the suddenly frail and brittle sliver of stability she had for a neck, and occasionally reached up to wipe clean her eyes. Despite wishing and expecting sleep to come, it didn't, and Scootaloo wasn't sure how much time had passed. In the darkness, she saw nothing but two eyes staring back at her, and they didn't go away even when she shut hers.
When Scootaloo heard the first noise she could since crawling under her covers, she threw them off of her and sat up, and finally got a sense of time. Outside of her window, the cloudless sky was bleeding into the pink-purple of almost-dawn. The sound that disturbed her was a loud, echoing bang that resonated through her house - a sound she was too familiar with, as it punctuated her parent's shouts and ended their arguments, and Scootaloo’s final message to the house every time she escaped into the world.
Her mother must be home.
Immediately, Scootaloo collapsed into bed, becoming the perfect effigy of a slumbering filly. It was still a few hours before her mom was supposed to wander in to wake her up for school, and maybe, if her father had already cleaned himself up and left, she would be none the wiser.
A quiet screech that turned into a scream echoed from downstairs. Scootaloo felt very cold under her covers. The scream was nothing like Scootaloo had ever heard leave her mother before - she'd heard all kinds of shouts, all kind of noises of panic and desperation and pain and anger, but this was the first time she heard a scream like this. It was guttural and untempered, and the sound of it terrified Scootaloo. She wanted to leap out the window to avoid having to see her mother.
The door slammed again, and Scootaloo could faintly hear hoofbeats galloping away from her home. Time felt frozen and Scootaloo trapped by inactivity. She didn't know how long it was - it could have been an hour, it could have been a blink. With her empty mind that had shut down from exertion Scootaloo had no way of telling - before she heard the door open yet again and a crowd of ponies enter. A host of unfamiliar voices speaking in rapid voices filled the house, talking to and shouting over each other with words Scootaloo couldn't quite make out or understand. In the middle of it all, her mother’s stifled and bodiless wailing occasionally became loud enough to block out all other sounds, but the conversation from the other voices went unheeded.
A loud shuffling and groans interjected the ceaseless, formless conversation, and Scootaloo's imagination ran with the possibilities of what was occurring downstairs. Any second, her mother would be upstairs, and, like a blanket thrown off, all at once her feigned sleep and everything else would be uncovered.
After a few minutes, the conversations filtered out through the stairwell and back into the kitchen, and became a muffled mess of noise when the door finally slammed shut. Only her mother remained in the house - that much Scootaloo could easily tell from the siren-like moans that she still heard inundating the air like a fog of noise, clouding her thoughts.
The strain of this on her mother's ash-corroded throat was clear enough. The wailing shuddered from, and became progressed into a state of quiet weeping that Scootaloo could just barely hear if she strained. Beside her, the sun began rising, and Celestia once again watched over Equestria. Scootaloo wondered if Celestia would have tried to help her father if she was a little filly. Sometimes, Scootaloo had flights of fancy of sending letters to the Princess, asking for help or advice. Just like everypony outside her family, though, Celestia's intervention would have torn them apart, though if it could do any more damage than a shard of glass and a pair of hooves had already, Scootaloo would be amazed.
As Equestria slowly came to life on the other side of the window, the sounds of life reminded Scootaloo of a world that wasn't entirely wrapped around her neck and clouded from her sight. Her mother began ascending the steps in slow, deliberate hooffalls, and Scootaloo flopped over, brushed her comforter to a natural position, and collapsed onto her pillow. She shut her eyes as soon as she saw heard the doorknob turn.
"Scootaloo?" her mother called from the threshold.
Scootaloo was silent. She wished she could will her heart to stop beating, because it felt like it was shaking her entire body.
"Scootaloo, are you awake?" Her mother's voice was ragged.
Scootaloo turned around ponderously, and pantomimed blinking awake.
"Wha...?"
"Scootaloo, wake up." Her mother stepped into her room.
"Hi, mom. T-time for school already?" She sat up in bed and immediately realized she had done it too quickly - no filly still shaking off sleep would be so active. Her mother, though, didn't seem to mind.
"Scootaloo, did you hear anything last night?"
"...hear what?" Scootaloo blinked, and repeated the word yawn inside her head over and over until one came out.
"Nevermind...nevermind. There was an accident, last night, Scootaloo. Your father is hurt very badly. He's in the hospital right now, but..." Her mother, her lip quivering through the whole sentence, finally broke down and her sentence became a suppressed moan. Scootaloo could see how red her eyes were, for the first time, and what a mess her face was. She had just stared at a reflection of that same face in the mirror before the sun had rose.
The room was quiet except for her mother's sniffling and quick gasps. Scootaloo had no idea if her mother was going to regain her composure, or if she had anything else to say.
"Oh," Scootaloo said, after a minute passed in silence.
"Just," her mother said, after wiping her eyes and taking in a deep breath, seemingly composed after exhaling it. "...just stay in your room, okay? There's a big mess at the bottom of the stairs."
"What about school?" This is the question Scootaloo was supposed to ask. This is the question Scootaloo would have asked.
"You'll go to school, but just stay in your room until I call you. I'm gonna clean that mess up. Just stay in here and..." Her mom glanced around the room, looking at her backpack, her dresser, then back at Scootaloo. She backed out of the room and shut the door.
Scootaloo was breathing hard. A deep wave of exhaustion and lightheadedness was confining her to her bed. The world had a blurry filter over it, almost like she was dreaming, and the only thing she wanted to do was collapse in bed, and finally sleep, pretending this was one of her nightmares. Curling back up under her covers, she wished the world away and shut her eyes.
"Scootaloo, wake up!" A shout from some distant plane of existence.
"Scootaloo, I already woke you up once. Please get up!" Her mother never said please when waking her up for school. Her voice also never had this shivering sensation, like any second it was going to break into formless noise, either. Scootaloo pushed herself up and threw the covers off.
"C'mon, you've gotta get to school. I'm going to the hospital to see your father, and I might not be home when you get back."
"Okay."
"Don't fall back asleep."
Her mouth twitched, and she swallowed back a suggestion that might have seen existence if she hadn't been so exhausted.
"Okay."
Her mom stared at her until she stumbled out of bed and stood on shaky hooves, then she turned and trotted from the room. Scootaloo heard her gallop down the stairs and out of the door. Her father was in the hospital. Good. He was sick. Very sick.
Scootaloo looked at the floor as she wandered to the edge of the steps, then looked down at the expanse below her. Her father was gone, but a shadow of his body was still lying there motionless in her memory. Her mother had certainly tried to clean up the mess that was there last night - of the crimson blood that sparkled in the moonlight and the golden liquor spilled near it, all that remained was a faint smear of burgundy. Lying against the way was a mop inside a bucket, the latter filled with water the color of tanned leather. Scootaloo stared at it for a while, then looked at her own feet. She wandered into the bathroom, threw the towel she'd sat on into the hamper, and grabbed her toothbrush.
The funeral was a quiet affair. It happened a few days later, on a bright and sunny day. Scootaloo walked a mile or two out of town with her mother, both of them dressed in encumbering black garb. Her mother's make-up was already running down her face by the time they reached the graveyard, though whether that was from tears or sweat, Scootaloo was unsure and saw no point in figuring out. At very least, her mother wasn't crying loudly enough for Scootaloo to hear.
It wasn't a place Scootaloo wanted to be. They left a short while after noon, a wordless precession of two ponies. There wasn't a single word exchanged the entire trip. Her mother hadn't said much at all after the accident a few nights ago. She pulled her down from the room and explained in blunt terms what had happened and what was going to happen, and Scootaloo had no choice but to take the circumstances in stride.
When they finally arrived, Scootaloo dug at the grass a little bit, and nopony missed her until they were ready to leave. The collected relatives exchanged a flurry of final goodbyes, and unfulfilled will-see-you-soons, and Scootaloo fell back into place beside her mother and began the march home.
It was like her mother became a different mare. She had cried at the funeral, but after that it was like she had discarded something, shed herself free of everything. It was a physical catharsis as well as an emotional one - the day after the funeral, she began to clean the house with a fervor that Scootaloo hadn't seen a tenth of in ten years. Everything that meant nothing to her was thrown away, and the house at the end was a skeleton of the former mess - gone were the useless trinkets, empty bottles, papers, mounds of trash and dusty once-valuables that littered the entire household. Scootaloo didn't even recognize it. Her father had left enough money that it was possible to support herself until she found a job, and she did in a few weeks.
Her mother had guests. Co-workers, for the most part, but scattered through the crowd occasionally was a lost contact - a former schoolmate, an old friend who'd heard about the tragedy. The miracle. For the first time in years, some ponies willingly visited their house, and could be let inside without risking retribution. A swarm of sympathizers filtered in small groups through the house, usually talking with her mother for only a short while before whisking her away for the night. In a short time, her mother turned them into friends, and the event that brought them together was entirely forgotten. Her mother smiled again, and the bruises healed.
Almost immediately after her mother finished her wall-to-wall renovation of the house and was left with almost nothing but bare furniture, Scootaloo's mom decided to move. She packed up, and they scurried off to a new apartment in Ponyville, a town their father had never dragged them to. A fresh start, but Scootaloo sometimes still felt stained by that old house.
It was thrilling for Scootaloo to see her mother transformed into something that wasn't a shambling corpse passing itself off as a pony, but the change left her just as untouchable and unrelatable. There was no way Scootaloo could talk to her about it. She didn't have anypony she could voice her concerns to - how could she explain having nightmares every night about beady, bird-eyed stallions glaring at her so hard her lungs locked up? How could she tell them why she still sometimes felt a constricting sensation about her neck, and had to reach her hooves up every so often and gently feel to make sure there was nothing but her imagination at work? She couldn't. She couldn't tell her mother what happened that night. In fact, she couldn't discuss her father at all.
There was a very clear, unspoken edict that hung over her household - that era of their life is over, and should never be brought back to life. Everything that happened would be forever banished, at least to her mother. And Scootaloo resolved to abide by that to keep her mother smiling, even if it meant that for the rest of her life every time a stallion got close enough to her that his shadow covered her, she would have to hide an urge to scream and flee under a fake smile. She never air the embers of this problem with complaints or discussion, but it still cropped up when she closed her eyes.
Her father's death was officially ruled an accident. The conclusion came quickly and unsurprisingly - no one involved in the incident save for one particular filly had any doubts at all that this was nothing more than a tragic, unfortunate accident. The level of inebriation her father was found in was such that every expert involved solemnly shook their heads at the foregone analysis - the stallion had tripped and stumbled down the steps while carrying a bottle of alcohol, and, at the point of impact, landed on the bottle so that it shattered and a piece of glass jammed into his chest with such force and such freakish accuracy that it was indelibly fatal. His death was quick and messy. Honestly, with how much and how often he drank, some ponies were amazed something like this didn't happen sooner. It was inevitable. That poor, cursed, sick stallion.
Nopony ever noticed the faint trail of bloody filly hoofprints that lead from the spot her father fell. They smeared up the stairs and snaked into the bathroom, where they ended at the sink. Scootaloo quietly and determinedly cleaned them while her mother was visiting her father in the hospital the day after the incident. Nopony knew, and nopony would ever know what happened to her father that night, unless they could read the language of Scootaloo's unnatural jitters, or see past her trauma-struck eyes and into a night that the filly had decided needed locked away forever, for the good of everypony except her.
What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you?
Applebloom and Sweetie Belle were silent for a long time.
The crickets buzzed incessantly. Scootaloo ruffled the fire with her stick, the summoned embers becoming bright enough to make her flinch.
Applebloom swallowed. "Scootaloo..."
Sweetie Belle's mouth was wide open, and she stared at Scootaloo, unblinking. None of them were really sure what to say, but Scootaloo was done talking for the night.
"Wow, Scootaloo," Sweetie Belle said after a minute, gaining some semblance of composure. "That's so awesome! I can't believe you managed something like that!"
"Yeah" Applebloom said, nodding slowly, "but I was wonderin' – what'd you do with the Wonderbolt's costume after you stole it from Rainbow Dash? I mean, she'd have to notice it was missin' eventually. Where's it stashed now?"
Scootaloo didn't answer. She didn't hear the question. She prodded the fire and her mind was burning. Thoughts were as ashes.
"Scootaloo, you hear me?" Applebloom leaned forward, and Scootaloo glanced out of her periphery at her. Through the fire, her face was shadowed and flickering, a melting, sinister mess.
Applebloom stared at her friend for a while, then frowned.
"Are you crying, Scootaloo?"
