Dead by Midnight

Fluttershy

Low, old voices crackle through the small apartment. They're voices of the past, voices from the forties or fifties maybe. I can’t remember when the movie came out, only that it came out before color television became really popular, so it’s all in black and white.

I can’t say as to why, but I’ve always liked old black and white movies.

If you watch an old movie, like The Bishop’s Wife, or one of those old noir films, and then watch a modern one from last year, the difference is jarring. There’s a kind of pace to old movies you don’t have anymore. Something about the way the camera cuts are slow and relaxed, and how the dialogue is measured.

Maybe I’m just being nostalgic.

“She’s late,” I say softly as I brush a veil of hair from my eyes and look down at my phone.

It’s not unusual for Rainbow to be running late as a general rule, but she rarely does it on date night. Even if we don’t go out all that often, we always make time to sit and watch a movie and cuddle on the couch.

Just thinking about how apologetic she’ll be makes me smile, though. Rainbow has a big guilt complex, and she’s probably already beating herself up for running late as it is.

I don’t begrudge her it. I know she loves me, so once in a while it’s okay for her to be late. Besides, I know the reason is because her job sometimes takes her to the back ends of Canterlot. Courier services have a high demand in this city, and Rainbow is good at her job, so she’s in equally high demand. The pay isn’t amazing, but according to Rainbow the tips are pretty good, and she always makes enough to put up rent and food, and still have enough left over to do a few fun things in the month.

Or to buy me a present.

That’s what she usually does.

I raise a hand to the latest one she got me a couple of weeks ago; a butterfly hairpin with understated little pink jewels in it that she got on discount from a pawnbroker she did a few jobs for. It’s beautiful, and I do love it, but the best part about it is the way Rainbow’s eyes sparkle every time she sees me wearing it.

My phone reads eight-thirty, which makes her half an hour late, and that’s the only reason I’m starting to worry.

She’s not usually this late.

Still, I resist the urge to call her. If she’s in the middle of a run, that will just make her later, and if she’s on her way home then I’ll just be delaying her because she always picks up if it's me.

A treacherous part of my mind still wants me to do it though. To ask where she is and where she’s been because a very small and awful part of me is worried that when she gets home she’ll be drunk or high, even though that’s never happened once in all the time we’ve lived together.

Rainbow would never do that to me, and yet…

I still worry.

“She’s fine.” I say it aloud because it feels more real that way. “She’s… she’s just fine.”

I set my phone down on the little coffee table and pause the movie before getting up to make my way into the kitchen. Tea. I think I need some tea to calm my nerves. Chamomile always helps, and Rainbow Dash likes it too. I’m sure she’ll appreciate having a hot cup of tea ready for her when she gets home.

Then we can curl up and watch a movie, and maybe after the movie we’ll go to bed and…

A blush creeps up my cheeks and brings a smile with it as I fill the electric kettle and set it to heat.

Being with Rainbow is never boring, that much is always true. With that said, in spite of her excitable nature and rough personality, she’s always so gentle with me. It’s nice, and I love her for it, but maybe tonight I’ll have the courage to ask her to be… to be not so gentle.

A sharp knock from the other room almost rattles the mug out of my hand as I pull it from the cupboard, and I turn to stare in the direction of the door. That's not Rainbow Dash; she has a key and never knocks. It’s not any of our friends either, because the few we still talk to don’t come around without saying something first.

And this isn’t a very good neighborhood.

The knock comes again and I swallow thickly before sidling around the island of the kitchen to the door and putting my eye to the peephole. It’s smudged and dirty, but I can make out a short figure in a hoodie standing at the threshold. A teenager maybe? A girl or a very slim boy, perhaps. I breathe out a soft sigh of relief. It's probably just someone who has the wrong apartment number.

“Uhm, c-can I help you?” I ask through the door.

The voice that comes back is one that puts a shock down my spine and settles ice in my stomach. It’s a voice I never particularly wanted to hear again.

“Can I come in?” Scootaloo asks, her voice sounds oddly ragged.

I bite my lip to keep from snapping. She's one of the ones who killed Sunset. She's one of the people who almost killed Rainbow Dash, too.

“I… I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Scootaloo,” I reply as calmly as I can. “You’re not welcome here.”

“I know.” Her words come out so calm and steady that it sets me back a step. “I don’t want to stay, I just wanted to talk to Rainbow for a sec, apologise and stuff, and then you’ll never see me again, okay? I promise.”

Turning, I press my back to the door and try to fight off the unpleasant words that are bubbling up from my gut and into my throat. I want to yell and scream at her. I want to tell her to go off and… and do something terrible. The very last thing I want is to let her and Rainbow Dash talk on the off-chance that it makes Rainbow backslide.

But it also might help.

Closure is a powerful thing, and Scootaloo used to be so close to Rainbow. Her betrayal hurt Rainbow almost as badly as Sunset’s death, and maybe this… maybe it could help her.

Heal her.

“She’s not here right now,” I say without turning.

“Can I wait?” Comes the muffled reply.

Being stuck in a small apartment with Scootaloo didn’t sound like my favorite way to spend Rainbow and I’s date night, but if I'm being honest, I've already made my decision. Rainbow deserves a chance at closure with Scootaloo and she also deserves for me to be here for it. And if it goes badly? Well, I’ll be here for that, too.

Taking a slow, deep breath, I turn and unlock the door.

Scootaloo looks nothing like I remember from CHS. She’s taller now, and coltish—all legs and elbows—and her face has an oddly lean and unhealthy look to it. Her dark hoodie is mostly clean, though, and she’s wearing a black denim vest over it, and as she lifts the hood away from her face, I wince at the deep bags beneath her eyes and the sharp angles of her cheeks.

“Are you hungry?” I ask, mostly out of habit and politeness, but a small part of me is genuinely concerned. She doesn’t look well.

“I’m fine,” she replies as I step back to let her in. “Thanks, though.”

I close the door behind her and follow her into the den. There’s a strange smell that follows her, and I wrinkle my nose as I try to place it.

“Woodsmoke?” I say as I finally put a finger on the scent. Then put a hand to my lips. I hadn’t meant to say it aloud but the moment my brain latched onto the answer it just fell out.

“Hm?” Scootaloo looks back at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Uhm, sorry, just… you smell like woodsmoke,” I say, forcing a small chuckle. “That’s all.”

“Oh, yeah.” She shrugs and cards her fingers through her short, ragged purple hair. “Pretty much the only way to stay warm in the winter is to burn stuff.”

For some reason, the way she says that puts a little ice cube in my stomach, and my memories go rogue on me, turning back to finding Rainbow Dash in that diner looking haggard and on the edge of death after having been homeless for months and spiraling down through a pit of self-destruction.

One of the worst days of my life.

“Mind if I sit?” Scootaloo asks, gesturing to one of the easy chairs, and I nod.

“Let me get you some tea, at least,” I say quietly. “It’ll warm you up.”

I don’t wait for her to argue. I just head back to the kitchen to take the hot water I’d meant for Rainbow and I, and pour out two mugs of hot chamomile with honey. I refill the kettle as the tea steeps. Hopefully, it will be full and hot again by the time Rainbow gets home. I get the feeling tonight will require a lot of tea.

Picking up the mugs, I head back to the living room. I set one mug in front of the couch for me, and the other in front of Scootaloo who stares down at it impassively.

Her eyes are glassy, and something about them unnerves me.

“So uhm… do you still live out in Whitetail?” I ask, flailing for some kind of conversation to fill the silence while Scootaloo toys with the teabag in her mug.

“Nah,” she replies casually. “My parents don’t even live there anymore. Not since they split up.”

I almost drop my mug even as I pick it up.

“W-What?” I set my mug back down as I try to find my tongue again. “When did that happen?”

Scootaloo shrugs. “Six or seven months ago, I guess, maybe more, I forget exactly when the papers were signed. Dad moved to Las Pegasus, and I think mom went back to Manehattan. She grew up there.”

“Oh.”

Awkwardness thy name is tragedy. Lacking anything else to do I pick up my mug and take a tentative sip as the silence thickens into something impenetrable. It hadn’t really occurred to me how far-reaching the effects of Sunset’s death would have been. I know how badly it wounded Applejack and Rarity’s families. I probably shouldn’t be surprised that the blow to Scootaloo’s ended up being fatal, in a certain sense.

Still, it’s a hard thing to hear.

Wait…

“You think your mom went to Manehattan?” I ask, turning to look at Scootaloo. “Do you live with your dad?”

To my surprise, Scootaloo actually starts laughing. It’s an ugly, brittle thing, and it puts a shiver down my spine as she rocks side-to-side in her seat. Her eyes are wide, and there’s something… odd… to them.

“As if,” Scootaloo scoffs. “Dad hates me. It was my fault they got divorced.”

“I’m sure that’s not entirely true,” I say, partially on reflex.

There’s that laugh again, and I realise it’s not so much brittle as it is bitter. Not so much ugly as angry. She’s angry, and I suppose in her situation, at her age, she probably has a right to be, even considering everything she and her friends had done.

“I think dad getting in my face and screaming at me at the top of his lungs about how this was ‘all my fault’ begs to differ,” Scootaloo says after a moment of grim laughter.

My stomach plummets, and I lower my head.

“Oh.”

It’s starting to feel like that’s all I can say. Despite everything, I almost feel sorry for Scootaloo. Okay, I do feel sorry for her. What happened with Sunset destroyed her life, at least for the time being.

“Are you living with relatives?” I ask, a real knot of concern starting to grow in my chest.

Scootaloo shakes her head.

“Friends?”

Another shake.

“Scootaloo?” I move closer and kneel down beside her so I can look up into those exhausted, glassy eyes of hers. “Where are you living?”

She curls up on the couch, tucking her knees up and covering half of her face as she stares down at me. Scootaloo’s gaze is a hollow thing, and it’s more unsettling than I want to admit. There’s something deeply and badly broken inside of her, and it reminds me of nothing so much as the first time I saw Rainbow Dash after she ran away from home.

Damaged.

That’s the word.

She’s damaged.

“I’m living somewhere safe,” Scootaloo says finally. “I’m fine. I just need to talk to Rainbow Dash, that’s all.”

Neither of us needs to say out loud that I don’t believe her, and as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t want her to go back to wherever it is she came from. I think doing that would be unkind.

On the heels of that thought comes that notion that I may have been being unkind for a long while.

“Let me get you something to eat,” I say softly. “And don’t tell me you’re not hungry. You’re skin and bones.”

Instead of replying, she asked again: “Where’s Rainbow Dash?”

Frowning, I shake my head and stand.

“She’ll be here soon, now stay here and let me get you some food.”

We don’t have much, but I’m sure Rainbow won’t begrudge a few of her courier snacks going to Scootaloo right now. I pull out a small bag of beef jerky, some almonds, and a couple of cheese sticks, and put them on a plate. It’s not a five-star meal but it’s enough to keep her going.

Gathering that up, along with a glass of water, I carry it all back into the living room where Scootaloo is sitting, unmoving and with her face still tucked against her knees, on the easy chair.

It’s a little eerie how still she is.

“Here,” I say, holding out the plate, “have something to eat… please? At least a little bit.”

Scootaloo eyes the meager meal, then takes it, and I have to hold in a small sigh of relief as she picks up a piece of jerky and some cheese, and bites into it.

My phone chooses that moment to ring on the table, and we both glance down at the image that pops up along with the caller ID.

Rainbow Dash.

“I’ll let her know you’re here.” I pick it up, and back into the kitchen before turning around to answer the phone as I lean against the counter.

//What’s cookin’ good lookin’?//

I groan. Rainbow Dash is many things but romantic isn’t one of them. At least not on purpose. She can be very sweet and endearing in the small things she does, but her idea of flirtation always falls on the wrong side of cheesy, which I think she knows and now just leans into.

“Nothing,” I say quietly. “I was waiting for you to get home before starting dinner.”

This time it’s Rainbow who groans over the line.

//Aw shit, that’s right… date night. Dammit, babe, I’m sorry, something came up and I just fuckin’—//

“It’s okay,” I say, cutting off her incoming tirade of self-flagellation. She could work herself into a froth later. “I uhm… something came up over here too, and I wanted to sort of prepare you.”

//Uh… okay? What’s up?// Her tone is lower and more serious now, and I can hear the eternal traffic of Canterlot humming away in the background.

“Are you close?”

//Few blocks down, yeah, I grabbed you one of those weird non-sodas from Neighpon you like.//

I snort and laugh softly. This is what I mean by Rainbow’s version of romantic. She can’t flirt to save her life, but then she’ll do something small or silly and it’ll just go to show she was thinking of you all along.

I really love that about her.

“Calpico is a Nieghponese staple, they’re not weird,” I say playfully. “A-Anyway… what I wanted to tell you was that we have company.”

An odd stillness travels over the phone in that moment that’s so intense I swear the line just went dead, and I’m about to ask if it had when Rainbow’s voice comes back a moment later. There’s a coldness to it now that I don’t recognise, and it actually takes me a split-second to realise it’s still Rainbow.

//Flutters… who’s there with you?//

I sigh softly, here we go.

“It’s Scootaloo, and she just wants to apologise, she—”

//Get out of there right now!//

I jerk the phone away from my ear and stare at it. Her voice changed. It turned cracked and wet, and I want to say it was some kind of static that did it but… but I’m not sure that’s really true.

//FLUTTERSHY I’M SERIOUS! RUN! JUMP OUT THE FUCKING WINDOW IF YOU HAVE TO JUST GET OUT OF THAT APARTMENT!//

My phone spits and starts with static and I hold it at arm's length for a moment before scowling and bringing it back to my ear. I can hear her running in the background.

“What is wrong with you!?” I say, fear and anger mixing. “It’s just Scootaloo! It’s—”

//SCOOTALOO IS DEAD!//

If it were possible for my heart to freeze over, that would have done it. I stare, dumbfounded down at my phone, then swallow hard and turn back to the den.

I stifle a scream at the girl I thought was Scootaloo, and who is now standing less than a meter from me with her dull, glassy eyes fixed on the phone as the connection crackles into static. Her gaze traces up slowly to fix on me, and now I imagine her complexion isn’t just sallow, but waxy and bloodless.

“S-Scoo—”

“Dash is right you know,” she says over me as she slowly unbuttons her vest until it’s hanging loose from her narrow frame. “It happened a while ago in the East End, six shots to the chest, and I was still awake after I died. I remember everything. The morgue, the autopsy, I remember mom and dad staring at me, and mom screaming.”

She unzips her hoodie to show the faded t-shirt beneath, and then lifts it, baring her chest and the ugly Y-incision cut into it that had been sutured closed with thick cord along with the six holes punched cruelly into her lean body, and I knew there’s no way she survived what I’m looking at.

It’s not possible, and I say so.

Scootaloo lowers her shirt, zips up her hoodie, and starts buttoning her vest again as she takes a step towards me. I try to stumble back, but I run into the island, and I swallow thickly as I look around the small apartment, trying to decide if Rainbow is right and if I should just jump out the window.

If it weren’t closed, I’d already be doing it.

“Our new mom needs her,” Scootaloo continues. “She needs Rainbow and the others who came out of the Fog, so, y’know, sorry about this—”

Fog boils out of the air before Scootaloo can finish. Her eyes narrow and, for the first time since she showed up at our door, something like real animation sparks across Scootaloo’s limbs and face as she rushes me, her face twisted in feral hate, and tackles me across the island to the other side of the kitchen.

Stars explode across my vision as my hard cracks against the cheap tile floor, and the next thing I know I’m being dragged to my feet by cold hands with a grip like iron. I flail and struggle, but even despite how thin she is I can’t move her.

She’s so strong… so much stronger than she should be.

“LET HER GO!” Rainbow’s voice comes bellowing out of the Fog that’s suddenly and inexplicably filling our apartment.

From out of that Fog, something I tentatively recognise emerges.

It’s Rainbow, after a fashion, but she’s not the same. Her courier’s outfit is gone, and in its place she’s wearing a long, mantled coat of brown leather with thick gloves on her hands, sturdy, steel-toed boots on her feet, and a heavy cowl thrown over her head. Her face is sunken around eyes that burn with unfamiliar gold when they should be a soft shade of cerise, and her mouth is twisted into a thin snarl as fury boils off of her like a palpable heat.

The gnarled cane in her right hand creaks as she raises it shakily to threaten the girl—no, the thing—behind me.

“I said,” Rainbow snarls, “let her go.”

For a long moment, Scootaloo doesn’t respond, but when she does it’s with a low, bitter laugh.

“Wow,” she mutters, something like real humor in her voice for the first time. “Guess ‘mom’ was too late for once, huh? You’re not a Survivor anymore, are you?”

“I’m better than a Survivor,” Rainbow says. “You’re about to find out just how much better.”

A cold, metal edge with ragged points like teeth presses to my neck, and I suck in a breath as Rainbow freezes. I glance down at the pale hand gripping the wooden handle of what I think I recognise as a keyhole saw, back from shop class at CHS.

“Flutters, everything is gonna be fine, okay?” Rainbow says softly.

“R-Rainbow?” The word comes out as a sob. “What’s going on!?”

“She doesn’t know, does she?” Scootaloo asks, and I can hear the smile on her face.

“SHUT UP!” Rainbow starts forward, then jerks to a stop when I let out a pained gasp as the teeth of the saw bite into the skin at my neck.

“You’re fast, Dash, but you’re not that fast,” Scootaloo growls.

Tears are streaking down my face, a wet heat that stains my cheeks even as I try not to swallow. I try not to even breathe. Tiny trickles of blood drip from the shallow nicks in my neck down past the neckline of my shirt as I try to focus on Rainbow Dash.

“Help me,” I sob.

She starts to nod, and as she does I see something change in her. Something under her skin shifts with a sickeningly liquid motion as viscous gold fluid dribbles from her nose and from between her lips like yellow froth.

I don’t know where my Rainbow Dash went, but that can’t be her. That thing looks, for all the world, like a diseased animal.

“I’m here.” Her voice is a wet, bestial rattle. “And I won’t let her—”

A red flash of pain rips across my throat with a sound like splitting leather, and suddenly the whole of my front is soaked in something, and I can’t get any words out. When I try to speak, the strangest gurgling noise is all I can make.

I look down at the drench of red that’s flowing down my shirt, then back up to Rainbow whose face is human again, and pale with horror. I don’t mind though. I prefer that to whatever was crawling up from beneath her skin. I don’t want to see whatever that was. I want to see her.

I want to see my Rainbow.

“Sshh,” Scootaloo murmurs as she cradles me back and hefts me in her arms. “You’ll be fine, I promise.”

My vision is fading as she looks up from me and over to Rainbow Dash.

“Move from there and she dies,” Scootaloo says flatly. “Only the Fog can save her now, so if you want her back then come find me in the cold.”

“I’m going to end you,” Rainbow snarls as the dark starts to take hold and a cold creeps into my limbs that's so pervasive that I immediately start to shiver.

The last thing I hear before I black out completely is Scootaloo’s voice, and it’s so grim and so terrible, that it breaks my heart.

“Promise?”