Sweet Belles and Bitter Berries

by keam

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sweetie Belle, Other, Romance, Rarity
Length: 2561

Sweetie Belle is confused. How can any parents be as crappy as hers? Berry Pinch is there to offer an explanation.

Sweetie Belle's parents have once more neglected their duties as parents and drop her off in Ponyville late at night, counting on Rarity to take care of her. When Rarity hears the story, she get enough. She declare that Sweetie Belle from now on will live with her, and her only. This decision, however, set all of Sweetie Belle’s world spinning until she's not sure what is real and not. Somewhere in this chaos, though, she meet somepony who can help sort things out. Berry Pinch's mother is as crappy as can be and Berry spend most of the time at her aunt's house. When she hear Sweetie Belle’s story she is baffled to know that she is not alone, and that there is more than one set of crappy parents in the world. Together they can contemple and complain. But most important, together, they can understand.

Published 2015-01-22 16:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-01-22 16:00:02 UTC

Prologue : One faithful night in Ponyville

Prologue : One faithful night in Ponyville

Sweetie Belle made her way up the streets of Ponyville, dragging her hooves behind her. Rarity would be mad at her for showing up so late, without warning. But not only would she be mad at Sweetie Belle, but with mom and dad, too, for just dumping her at Rarity , as usual. Like they would care. They never cared for their children.

She stopped and looked across the street. Inside the big window, a filly her age was fast asleep. Sweetie Belle recognised the filly from school. Berry Pinch, she was pretty sure she was named. Berry Pinch always stayed in school after the bell rung out, as if she were waiting for someone, even though the only one left would Cheerilee. Turning away from the window, she continued through town, contempling what she had seen. Berry Pinch had been happy and safe in her bed, indicating that her parents weren't as bad as Sweeties, yet she had never seen them, because, like she said, they never picked up Pinch after school.

Caught up in trying to remember more about Berry Pinch, Sweetie Belle didn't even notice that she had reached her destination, Carousel Botique. She automatically opened the door and stepped inside, her mind still elsewhere.

"Sweetie! What are you doing here?!" Rarity's shrill exclamation quickly brought Sweetie back to reality. Standing in front of her was her sister. Rarity's normally well-kept mane was frazzled and her glasses, which she preferred not to admit that she needed, where balancing unsafely on the brink of her muzzle. Based off of her apppearances, Sweetie Belle guessed that she was pulling an all nighter to finish some big order.

"Rarity!" Sweetie Belle exclaimed, throwing herself into her sisters warm embrace. "Mom and dad left me off in town. They said they bought some last-minute vacation thing and will be back in a week!"

Rarity embraced her little sister, silently cursing their parents for being so reckless and uncaring.
"Schhh, everything's alright Sweetie, I'm right here. I'll take care of you, no need to worry." She said, doing her best to comfort her little sister.

"Sister?" Sweetie Belle suddenly asked, breaking the embrace and looking up at her sister. Rarity immediately understood that something was going on. Sweetie Belle almost never called her sister.

"Yes?" She whispered.

"Why don't mom and dad care about me? About us?"

There it came, the question she waited for Sweetie Belle to ask since their parents let her down the first time.

Rarity took a deep breath and once more embraced her sister, making herself ready to tell some kind of comforting lie. she had invented hundreds. many of which she told herself over and over again growing up. But then she saw her sister's eyes. so innocent and ununderstanding, yet they shared her pain. Those made her make a decision that would change her little sister's life forever, hopefully for the better.

"I don't know why, Sweetie, but I do know one thing. I am through with this. From now on, your living with me." It felt so good to say it. She was never going to allow her parents to let Sweetie Belle down again. never.

Sweetie Belle gasped. Rarity couldn’t mean that she was going to live with her in Ponyville now, could she? But what would mom and dad say? What would they think about that Rarity was taking care of her now?

“Sweetie. Sweetie Belle.” Rarity’s exclamation snapped Sweetie out of her thoughts and she saw that Rarity was looking worridly at her.

“yes Rarity? what do you want Rarity?” She asked in her sweetest, most innocent voice.

“You should go to bed.” Rarity stated flatly, chasing Sweetie Belle up the stairs.

As she reached the top of the stairs, Sweetie Belle looked back down into the bottom floor of Carosel botique. What she saw made her regret her decision. On the floor, Rarity was sitting, quietly crying into a piece of fabric that she held in her hooves. What she saw broke Sweetie's heart, but she was too broken herself from all that Rarity told her to do anything. Instead, she went to bed, hoping this Nightmare would be over once she woke up.

Author's Note

So this is it, the start of yet an other story. Please tell me what you think in the comments below.

Preread by Dusk Midnight Melody and Derec mc coy
Edited by Jacob Bading

Special thanks to Dusk Midnight Melody for helping develope the idea to this fanfic to begin with.

Chapter 1: Life's rarely a cakewalk served upon a silver spoon...

“Sweetie Belle, what are you doing here? Weren’t you going to spend this week with your parents?”

Sweetie Belle looked up at her teacher, a somewhat sad expression on her face, and extended Rarity’s note to her teacher.

“Yes, Miss Cheerilee, but the situation changed.” She answered, using the same phrase Rarity had used earlier that morning. The situation had changed.

Cheerilee took the note in her hoof, quickly scumming through the text.
When she was finished, she looked up, a big plastic smile on her face, and welcomed Sweetie Belle back to class. No need to make her more sad and worried than she already must be. That Sweetie Belle’s parents were no longer going to have the main responsibility for their youngest daughter if Rarity got her will through was some big news. She didn’t know how Rarity could take such a big decision. Oh wait, scratch that. She knew exactly how she did it. Growing up with a mother that barely could take care of herself, and a party-obssesed older sister with drinking problems, Cheerilee had always been the one to care for her family and younger sisters.

She looked into the classroom before entering it, looking at a little pink unicorn filly with a light and dark pink mane in the backrow. Her name was Berry Pinch, and Cheerilee was painfullly aware of the two filly’s similar situations. Maybe she should introduce Berry Pinch to Sweetie Belle? She had a feeling they’d get along pretty well.

“Sweetie Belle? Are ya listening? What do ya think we should do to try and get our cutiemarks today?”

Apple Bloom waved her hooves in front of Sweetie Belle's faced.

“I already told you, we should try zipplining again! You can’t know it’s your special talent until you tried it more than one time!” Scootalo commented, glaring angrily at Apple Bloom.

“And ah already told ya that I’m not crashing into that tree one more time! It took me weeks to get the tree sap out of mah coat. Ah think we should try making apple jam again!”

Scootalo just rolled her eyes in annoyance and boredom.

“Boring! Who wants an apple for a cutiemark? A zipplining cutiemark is much cooler!”

“Is not!”

“Is too!”

“Hey, girls” Sweetie Belle said, looking at her arguing friends. The sad tone in her voice made them focus on Sweetie, putting their argument aside for the moment.

“I don’t think I want to go crusading today. You girls have fun without me, okay?”

Sweetie didn’t stay long enough to hear their response. Instead she walked across the school yard, over to the old apple tree in the corner that was said to have been planted there as a sapling when they first built the school. It looked sad as it stood there, it's bare grey arms streching up against the sky.

As Sweetie Belle reached the tree, she peeked behind it to make sure that no love birds where sitting and kissing behind the tree, as they often did. what she found, though, was no small lovebirds, but a lonely filly. More exact, a filly named Berry Pinch that Sweetie Belle had seen sleeping in her bed through a window the night before.

“Hey, your Berry Pinch, right? You're that filly who always stays in the school house after school.” Sweetie Belle said, her voice nothing more than a soft whisper. Immediately afterwards, she felt like an idiot.

The filly looked up at Sweetie Belle and slowly nodded.

“Yeah, I usually stay in school until it’s time for aunt Cheerilee to go home and come with her…”

“But your parents then, won’t they miss you if your not home for dinner?” Sweetie Belle asked, sitting down next to the filly.

Berry Pinch shook her head, looking down into the ground and shifting uncomfortably.

“No...mom is probably out drinking anyway, so it’ll just end with me warming up a frozen microwave pizza and eating it infront of the TV. At aunt Cheerilee’s I at least get some real food. not that I expect you to understand what it feels like. After all, your mom came and picked you up almost every day after school and everything.”

Sweetie Belle looked at Berry Pinch in shock. Of all the things the filly just told her, what got to her the most was that this filly beside her thought Rarity was her mother, which she kind of was, seeing as she declared that Sweetie was no longer going to live with their parents. Ever.

“No, no, I understand. My parents don’t care about me and my sister. At all. Infact, the reason I came here is because I feel so very confused and sad, since Rarity said i’m living with her now...”

Berry Pinch looked at her in utter confusion, as if she couldn’t belive the words coming from Sweetie Belle.

“Rarity?” She asked meekly.

“She’s my sister. She’s the one that picked me up after school, not my mother. my mother and father live in Trottingham, and they often leave me for Rarity to take care of. So, you can say that just like you go to Cheerilee instead of being home alone, I come here and live here for a while.”

“Oh. And I thought I was alone having crappy parents. Seems like I was wrong.” Berry took a big breath. “Hey, how would you like to hang out after school sometime? Maybe talk about how, of all parents out there, we ended up with the crappy ones?”

Berry Pinch offered a shy smile, rising from the ground and extending her hoof to Sweetie Belle, which she happily accepted. As they stood up, the bell rang and they hurried back to the school.

"Sweetie Belle, could you stay for a while? I was going to talk with Rarity when she comes to pick you up."

Sweetie Belle, who was on her way out of the school house in company of Berry Pinch, stopped dead in her tracks. She opened her mouth to say something, but Berry cut her off before she could start.

"Acctualy, I was wondering if Sweetie Belle could come with us home tonight?"

Cheerilee looked a tad surprised, but nodded.

"Of course, it's been a long time since you brought a friend home with you. I’ll tell Rarity when she comes to pick you up. Just one thing, though. could you buy some Brown Apple Bety's from Curly Cobbler on your way home that we can have for desert tonight?"

The girls looked at each other and nodded, receiving a few bits from Cheerilee to pay for the treats.

Curly Cobbler, or Brown Apple Betty as she was really named, was the slightly older aunt of Applejack and well-known for her delicious and incredibly cheap treats that she sold at the market. Because of the cheap prices, Curly Cobblers stable at the market was the young fillies and colts favourite place to stop by for a short snack after school.

"That'll be 7 bits, girls" Curly Cobbler said, giving Berry Pinch and Sweetie Belle the bag with Brown Apple Betys.

“Thanks Curly! Your treats is always the best!” Berry Pinch said, giving Curly Cobbler 7 bits.
The mare smiled, accepting the bits.

“No problem. Tell Cheerilee I sid hi, will you?”

Berry giggled.

“Of course. see you!” She answered waving her hoof as she left.

“I understand that it must be very confusing for you, suddenly not going to live with your parents anymore, even if they where crapy. I mean, i’m used to it, but you... You never imagine something like this could happen.”

Sweetie Belle nodded. she and Berry were laying on their backs on the bed in the guest room in Cheerilee’s house.

“H-has your mother always been...you know...crappy?” She asked, blushing slighty and silently cursing herself for asking such a stupid question.

“Aunt always told me she first started drinking when their dad left, and that it got even worse after my dad left. Aunt Cheerilee is really nice, always letting me spend the night here, when I don't want to go back home to mom... Hey, do you get that feeling too, that your sister, Rarity, feels more like your mom than you actual mom?"

Sweetie Belle flipped over on her stomach and looked at Berry.

"I guess, sometimes. Rarity has cared for me for as long as I can remember. Always when mom and dad weren't there, she'd be there. She was even there when mom and dad where."

"It was nice to talk to you, Rarity. I just wanted to let you know that. I'm here to help if you need me. I understand this must be hard, and I wish you luck in getting custodity of Sweetie Belle."

Rarity gave Cheerilee a weak smile.

"That's the bright side of it. Hopefully my parents will cooperate and let me take care of her without me having to take illegal actions. But if it does come down to having to take legal actions, I will."

Noticing Cheerilee's slightly forced smile, she chuckled.

"But of course we hope it won't have to come down to that"

"Of course. Good bye Rarity!" Cheerilee said, taking farewell of her friend as she turned to the left and started walking down the road to her home.

Rarity had never felt so emptied and tired. She had just got off the phone after having a long argument with her mother about Sweetie Belle. All of Rarity's hopes of solving it quickly and without any trouble had flew out of the window. When hearing about Rarity’s decision, her parents had decided to cut their vacation short. Two days, Rarity had, before they’d come to Ponyville to take up the fight over Sweetie Belle. It was not enough. No amount of time would ever be enough to prepare Rarity for fighting her own parents so that her sister could have the best life possbile.

The door opened, and Sweetie Belle walked through it. Quietly, she walked across the room and up the stairs to the second floor. She was carrying a sorrowless smile on her muzzle and her eyes shone in a way they rarely did anymore. She was happy. Truly happy. And once more, just like when she decied to take care of her, Rarity felt a power rising within. A power that made all the fighting that her parents would carry with them when they arrive seem like a small cost. A small cost to see her sister carry that smile.

Author's Note

Preread by Dusk Midnight Melody and Derec mc coy
Edited by Jacob Bading