The camera flashed before I could reject, and I ignored the reporter to thank the ponies offering water — if my face isn't covered in dark ash like Steel's, I'm already screwed anyways.

I took a bottle of water graciously. While Steel and the sheriff were drinking, however, I helped Bush to get some of the water in his system while the doctor wrapped a clean sheet over and around his head.

Bush eyed me down, but accepted my help. The look in his eye was one of anger, and surprise.

A few feet behind me, I hear the sheriff exhale and the sound of a bottle crunch slightly.

"Is there anything you could tell us about what went on in there, sheriff? Any clue as to what started the fire?" This coming from whom I can only assume to be the reporter.

"It's late," He starts to speak (with an audibly more gruff sounding voice than normal) but coughed and cleared his throat. "We're tired, hurt, dirty... Everypony should get some sleep. I'll give a statement on the morrow."

He strained when attempting to speak the words "dirty" and "get" without coughing, which reminds me, at the very least, to be grateful I hadn't been exposed to the fumes for as long as he was.

With Bush's injuries tended to as best as could be done with the limited supplies of a small desert town, I finally turned to face the sheriff and Steel.

"Need a place to stay?" The sheriff looked at all of us with understanding.

Surely he hadn't seen us around in awhile, and he knew Steel was Bush's step-son, so by common deduction he must've assumed we were just visiting town.

Steel looked at me, knowing that this was mainly my decision.

"For the night." I answered the sheriff with an appreciative tone. "But only because I want to see how that photo came out."

Steel coughed in an attempt to laugh. "We both look like shit!"

The sheriff chuckles, and notions for us to follow him.

By now, it's incredibly dark out and the crowd of ponies had mostly dispersed.

The two or three ponies who remained did so to give their condolences, or express how glad they were to see everypony make it out. Other than that, there was a long period of sullen silence where nopony made a noise, save for the occasional coughing or clearing of the throat.

The moon was out tonight, but just enough to dimly light the sandy canvas; as well as the desert town's wooden rooftops.

We were led to a house nestled between two others, and as we entered the sheriff's house he pointed out something along the lines of how one of his neighbors just so happened to be the mayor. I heard some of what he was saying, but I wasn't necessarily listening. The inside of the place was more spacious than it looked on the outside, and it kind of took me aback for a second.

The sheriff looked at the doctor and told him he was good to head upstairs with Bush to the second door on the left. When he turned to Steel and I, he also directed us upstairs and to a guest room. "First door on the right."

We thanked him graciously and went to bed. The hallway was dark with the silhouettes of what we made out to be four doors.

First door on the right, I thought to myself and pushed the door open.

I felt the wall for a light switch once inside, flicked it, and the room brightened up to reveal a neatly cleaned room with a tidy bed, and–

The smooth, carpet-like texture of a comfy looking, seductively alluring, dream of a recliner had taken the fullest of my attention.

Without haste I leaned my body into the chair and slumped backward as the front lifted to support my hind legs.
A deep sigh of satisfaction breathed out from the depths of my chest, like the slow stopping of a breaking train.

"This'll do nicely."

"Here, catch." Steel tossed me the bed cover to use as a blanket, and wrapped himself up under the sheet.

"Thanks—"

"We'll get our things and head out tomorrow, after we find out how the fire started."

"Sure, and get a copy or two of the newspaper sent to Applejack's farm." I stretched long and slowly, releasing tension throughout the joints and muscles of my body.

With a satisfied 'umph' I relaxed again, and finished what I was saying. "That way, it'll either be waiting for us when we get there, or it'll arrive sometime that day."

"You talk too much, Cross." Steel mumbled and rolled over.

With a smile, I rolled onto my side and finally let sleep overcome me.

About an hour had passed since everpony had woke up, and thanks to the sheriff insisting we wash the dark smoke stains from our manes and coat, we were squeaky clean when the reporter came knocking.

"Please, come in." The sheriff offered upon opening the door.

"Morning sheriff, you got that statement?" The reporter asked, taking a pen and notepad out from a small saddlebag.

The sheriff waved the reporter, Steel, and I over to a nearby sofa and pulled up a chair for the reporter to sit across from us

"What happened, was an accident." The sheriff began, pausing briefly to let the reporter write down his words.

Two eyes quickly darted up from the paper. He had written down the whole sentence in just a few swift motions of his mouth, and was signalling the sheriff to continue.

"You.. wrote that down, that fast?" Steel sounded surprised, and frankly skeptical.

The pen made a slight ‘thump’ when the reporter dropped it from his mouth to speak.

"Sure did!" He said proudly. "It's my talent, and I put it straight into the printing business. Now, sheriff?"

The reporter picked up his pen with his teeth and got it situated into a firm position to write with.

"Ah yes, as I was saying." The sheriff nodded. "What happened was an accident. I had put the owner of the building on house arrest, and I accompanied him so that he could retrieve a few things."

The sheriff stood outside on Bush's porch and waited for a few minutes, before deciding that it had been long enough.

He slightly held open the front door and shouted into it. "Hey, Bush!"

Nothing gave out a response, so he pushed in the door all the way and trotted into the house.
Before heading upstairs, he went to check all the rooms on the bottom floor and found the cellar door standing open. The thought of being pushed down the stairs pestered him, so he quietly shut the door behind him on his way down.

He reached the bottom at the same time Bush was coming up, and they bumped into each other. Already seeming to be angry over something, Bush started swinging at the sheriff.

Behind Bush, a fire had spread and was growing larger by the second; just out of the sheriff's peripheral he saw the culprit on the ground-crawling fire, a cigarette butt, before it was reduced to ash.

The full hit to the side of the face, that came while he was distracted, had the sheriff reeling back a bit. But more importantly, the momentum caused Bush to lose his balance, and upon trying to regain it he stumbled backwards into the fire.

Acting as quickly as he could, the sheriff pulled Bush out of the fire by his hind legs. Ironically due to Bush's thrashing, the sheriff twisted on his footing at the last second.

The good news was that despite having an injured leg, the sheriff was able to help Bush up. The bad news, was that the fire had practically engulfed the cellar and was seeping through the cracks in the floor to the ceiling.

With nowhere else to go, they climbed up the stairs in a panic, struggling with each step. Half way through their ascension, they had heard a loud crash that nearly caused them to fall, and when they finally reached the door they found that no amount of force would get it to budge.

"And after what felt like an eternity, these two brave gentlecolts came along."

The reporter adds an emphasis on his pens punctuation and flips the note over the pad. "Picking up on your story, now, gentlecolts?"

I cleared my throat and started from the point when Steel and I had been drinking at the saloon.

Happy with his interview and statement, the reporter left with the three of us seeing him out.

"I assume you two will be heading out soon?" The sheriff turned to ask us with a newfound lightness to his step.

"That's the plan, sheriff. Thank you for your hospitality." I said, with a hint of finality.

"Actually, before you go, I'd like to ask both of you to go and see Bush."

With a sigh, Steel turned and went up the stairs.

I really didn't want to waste my time, let alone my breath on Bush, but my better judgement forced me to go with him.

When we reached the door I attempted to follow Steel inside, but he stuck his hoof out in front of me and shut the door.

Bush was sitting upright in the bed, looking at Steel with his one good eye.

"You wanted to see me?" Steel asked.

"You did this." He hissed in a low, dry voice.

"That was never my intention–"

Bush starts coughing, and then cackles. "Your intentions were made clear, when y'all left town an took Rose wit'cha. Now ya come back, destroy my alcohol–"

Steel interrupts him.
"What you were drinking could have killed you, or gifted you a nice and comfy jail cell until you were pretty much on your death bed."

"That wadn't your place–"

He interrupts again. "Would you have rathered me report it to the sheriff? I didn't burn our house down, your cigarette habit, on top of your alcoholism, is what led to this."

With a disgusted look on his face, Bush opened his mouth to speak but no words came out; the sudden realization had finally hit him and he grumbled.

"It hurts me just as bad as it hurts you that the house is gone. So many memories, especially of mom, were made in that house." Steel points a hoof in the direction of the now burnt building.

"But this needs to be a wake-up call for you, I'm just about the only family you've got left willing to forgive you."

"What good will it do, if yer just leaving town anyways?" He countered.

I could hear Steel sigh through the door, and I knew it was about to get personal for them.

"It does a lot of good if it means that you'll get a second chance. I won't lie, the amount of hatred and confusion in my heart and in my head growing up was so large, it's a wonder how I don't get sick by just standing here and looking at you. I felt completely and utterly alone."

Bush scoffed slightly and waved a hoof away. "That last part ain't at all true, ya had Rose!"

Steel clenched his jaw and came over to the bed, towering over his step-father with a hoof pointed to the stallion's chest. "I had to teach her everything she knew! You may have changed her diapers, fed her, and bathed her for the first two years of her life, but when mom died it was all left to ME."

He was so close to him, that when a bit of spit flew from Steel's mouth, his step-father winced.
"Raising a filly by myself before I had even earned my cutiemark was no easy task. I could barely understand my father's death, and when mom died? My world shattered. You helped me, and the next thing I knew you hated me and everything else in existence. I raised Rose because no one else would. Your little filly could never understand why you were the way you were, and if it wasn't for her mother's heart, she wouldn't have had the compassion to have kept trying to help you as much as she could! I was alone, because I didn't get to be a brother to Rose. I had to be her parent, because the slimy, alcoholic, shit-stained stallion who needed to take that role forgot he was supposed to be a daddy."

For the first time in his life, Bush felt like a scared and defenseless animal. He was the injured prey backed into a corner and Steel was the hungry predator who had been licking his lips stalking, waiting, and watching for the inevitable to happen — only he could bare no more and knew that now was the best time to pounce.
This is it, Bush thought to himself.
The end of the line.

Steel leaned in close, pressing his hoof harder against his chest and glaring directly into his eyes.

"And you know where she is now? She's–"

I opened the door and casually came over to Steel, thinking fast on how to keep the cat in the bag.
"Sorry to interrupt. You think we should get going, Steel? Rose is expecting us back by tomorrow, and I don't want the news to reach her before we can break it to her ourselves."

With a grunt, Steel moves his hoof off of Bush's chest. "Yeah, that'd probably be best."
His eyes pierce Bush's morale again and before turning to leave Steel whispers down to him. "I'm all you've got."

Once his step-son is a safe distance from the bed, Bush swallows the lump in his throat and exhales lightly in relief.

Author's Note

(For future readers, this tidbit of input won't be applicable and you may carry on to the next chapter if you wish.)

I was on a bit of a writer block, so this one took a bit longer for me to get out and I apologize for that. Until then, have a good one y'all.