Perhaps

Chapter 2: Waking Up

I hear the music long before I wake up. I try to open my eyes, but there’s some kind of weight holding them shut. I don’t know what’s going on until I hear the rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor close by. I’m in a hospital? I spend what seems like hours trying to figure out what happened after I found mom.

I passed out just after the medics got there. On the way outside, I heard them talking about severe trauma and something else that I can’t quite hear. Mostly stuff about my “unstable mental condition,” as my former psychologist would say…emphasis on former. I start to wonder if they’re just figments of my imagination, and if I’m really dead already. I guess my mother could do worse than kill me, but she’s already done that more than once.

The worst thing she ever did was die in my arms, just as I was beginning to forgive her for abandoning Rain and I.

“RAIN!!!!!”

My eyes fly open, and I shoot up in my bed. I suddenly realize that I have no idea where I am, what day it is, or why I’m here. I panic and scream unintelligibly, with no idea why I’m doing it or who/what it’s directed at.

No one comes. I later learn that my roommate is a screamer, and they thought it was him acting up again. I finish after about 15 minutes, and a nurse comes in to see how we’re both doing. She nearly faints when she sees me sitting upright, looking haunted. She runs out and brings back a doctor, who immediately begins asking me questions.

“Do you know your name?”

“Li-Lightning Runner.”

“Do you know what day it is?”

“No…”

“Do you know what time it is?”

I look at the clock. “3:15?”

“Good. Can you tell me the last thing you remember before waking up here?”

I think hard. It’s too painful to recall that day, but I feel like I have to say something. I decide on the truth. “My mother…she died. I blacked out, but I could hear voices. I don’t remember what they were saying.”

The doctor nods. “That was probably the medics. They said you went comatose just after they arrived. You were mumbling something about rain. Can you tell me what’d so special about that?”

This tugs at my heartstrings; he doesn’t know about her?

“My sister: Rainbow Dash,” I say slowly. “She wasn’t at the house with me. She was at our new home…is she alright?”

He hesitates for a moment. “I suppose she has a rainbow-colored mane?” I nod. “She was here not too long ago. She left about 2 hours ago. Said she had to get the house ready for when you came back.”

He notices the pain in my eyes after telling me this. He tries to comfort me by saying that she should be back anytime, but he doesn’t understand; the last pony I want to see is Rain. She looks too much like mom, and she’s too young to even know that yet. The poor little filly can’t even fly yet. The last thing she needs is me constantly reminding her that I don’t want to see her, but there’s no easy way to break that to her.

I check myself out of the hospital, since I have no mother and they can’t locate my father. Thank Celestia for small favors, I guess. My first stop is back home to see if Rain is there. If she is, I think I can get through a conversation with her, maybe even get used to being the only family she has left.

When I get home, she’s asleep on the couch. I smile for the first time in weeks. Even somepony as evil as dad couldn’t take the beautiful innocence out of my sister. I kiss her on the forehead and go into my room to settle in. I spend the afternoon crying.

A few hours later, Rain walks in and asks why I’m so sad. I do my best to break it to her; I try to tell her that mom’s not around anymore, and that it’s only us from now on. After about 10 minutes of repeatedly restarting to find the right words, I manage to get it out. She understands about mom, at least, and joins me in grieving. For how distant our mother was, she was always kind and sweet around her little “Dashie,” and I guess there’s some memory of that in Rain’s head. We may not have had the best parents, but she had the best mom in all of Equestria.

After a few months, I’ve started to get the hang of cooking, or at least, not butchering everything. Before mom, I’d always just make soup; Rain only recently moved to solid foods. The kid decided everything for herself, I’ll give her that much, including when she wanted to give up on liquids. So, the truth came out that I was capable of burning orange juice while preparing a solid breakfast…I wasn’t exactly certain how that’s even possible, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.

I eat with her, then drop her off at the flight school I’ve enrolled her in. She seems to like it, and she’s even made a friend…why this tiny, timid filly named Fluttershy seemed like a good friend for her only hit me after I met her: Fluttershy is what Rain was only about a year ago. She’s introverted, refrains from making eye contact, and too scared of ponies not liking her to even try meeting them. Still, I’m proud of Rain for convincing “Flutters” to accept a friend in her life.

Rain really can fly now; it impresses me that she’s only been flying for 7 months, and she’s almost as fast as me now. I have to stop myself from laughing my wings off every time she crashes into something, and I try to soften the blow by calling her a nickname I came up with after her first unaided flight. She obviously loves me softening it like that, based on her reaction the first and only time I’ve ever seen one of her classmates call her by that name…

Let’s just say that I’m the only one who’s allowed to call her “Rainbow Crash.”

Author’s Note: I currently have ideas on how this might end, but not how long it’ll be until I reach that end. Rest assured that, right now, I have no intentions to kill any major characters. Oh, and I didn’t decide to include Fluttershy until I started to write this chapter, so sorry for not tagging her in this. Please spread this around!!! More to come ☺