//------------------------------//
// The Good Old Days (Alt Ending) 
// Story: The Life of a Broken Pegasus 
// by TimeLord_Whooves 
//------------------------------//

	Rainbow Dash slowly walked into her living room, sighing as she dropped her saddlebags into the corner as she slumped into her favorite chair.  It had been a long day at work, the new ponies on the weather team had no coordination whatsoever and they didn’t listen to orders.  
“I’m getting too old for this.” she said aloud to herself as she stretched out her wings to hear a chorus of cracking.  Indeed her years had been starting to show as her mane had begun to dull and wrinkles had started to appear on the mare's face.
Rainbow closed her eyes as she settled into the comfortable armchair.  After a moment, she looked up at the bookcase that was set into the wall just behind the chair, grabbed her favorite Daring Do novel, and opened it.  A small tink came from the floor behind her as something metal had bounced off of it.
Looking down, Rainbow noticed a metal bookmark with a tassel on one end, a small jewel decorating its thin, faded, rainbow colored threads.  She looked at it for a moment then, eyes widening, picked up the thin strip of metal from the floor and turned it over in her hoof.  On it read, ‘May you never forget your place in my heart.’
Her eyes started to fill with tears as she remembered the pony who had given this bookmark to her.  It had been years since she had thought about Scootaloo, after the accident it just became too painful.
She burst into loud sobs as she remembered the filly’s smile, her first flight… her second first flight.  Memories of the orange filly started to race in her mind as more tears began to flow freely from her eyes.
That day, after she fell, her crash.  Although she managed to catch the young pegasus, the damage had been too much.  Her second concussion turned into a coma.
Rainbow walked over to the liquor cabinet which sat beside couch on the other side of the room and grabbed a bottle of whiskey cider, the strongest cider that the Apple family made.  She took it to her chair, opened it and began to drink as she sank back into the armchair.  The liquid burned pleasantly in her throat and warmed her whole body as it hit her stomach.  She continued to remember what happened to her sister.
For three whole years she kept Scootaloo alive, against her friend’s and the doctor’s advice.  Every day for three years she’d come to visit her sister in hopes that she’d miraculously be awake when she got there, she never was.  Three years of disappointment every single day.  Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and everypony in Ponyville were surprised to see her every day, expecting her to have gone mad or had just given up and taken her own life long before.
Finally Twilight and Applejack had managed to talk her into pulling the plug on Scootaloo’s life support.  Rainbow Dash sat in the room with her through the whole night, crying, begging Scootaloo to wake up, wake up before she could never wake up again.
Rainbow couldn’t sleep for three weeks afterwards.  The only thing that kept her going was the constant visits from her best friends, which only did so much at first, but it got her through the funeral.
Though it seemed like Rainbow would never recover from the pain and sorrow, she did, and it didn’t take long before she was back doing her job, almost as if nothing ever happened.  Like she had completely forgotten about Scootaloo.  This worried Twilight and Applejack greatly, more so than the others.  Between constant letters from Twilight and regular visits from Applejack, they found out that she had put the whole incident from her mind and was going on as if she had never adopted Scootaloo in the first place.
Rainbow Dash looked back at these days in horror, how could she even pretend to forget about Scootaloo.  The thought of it was just insulting to the sweet little filly.  Rainbow felt disgusted with herself for this, she couldn’t forgive herself.  She couldn’t stand the fact that she had just forgotten about the one pony who she had ever called family.
More tears poured from her eyes as she looked at the half empty bottle of whiskey cider.  She chugged the last of it down in one go and slammed it onto the coffee table in front of her where it shattered.  Glass flew everywhere, most of it clattered to the floor but some managed to stick into the surrounding furniture.
Rainbow looked down at her hoof which had been cut by the shard that she still held.  She eyed it wearily before smiling, a twisted, mad smile.
“Well, Scoots.  It looks like I’ll be joining you shortly.” she said as her body relaxed into the chair.  “I love you Scootaloo.”
Her breathing slowed, her smile faded, the pegasus went limp in her chair as her last breath faded from her chest.  As her hooves fell off the sides of the chair, a glittering flash of light came from Rainbow’s chest.  A shard of broken bottle stuck out from it.