//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10 
// Story: Old memories 
// by TheSourceCode95 
//------------------------------//

	Time has it’s own cruel ways of playing with you. Minutes almost never pass as minutes, hours never pass as hours. And right now, minutes felt like hours. Her house, her dad, gone. Disappeared. Evaporated, incinerated. Most of her life she had been on the streets, but still. Her house used to give some kind of comfort you could not find on the streets. And even though her dad was never there for her, it was still her dad. No matter how poorly he treated her, he brought some kind of strange comfort with him. Even drunk.

Many times she had wished it gone. Her house, her dad, her life. But now it had happened. It was gone. Her house and dad at least. And her life would soon follow. Street life was hard for anypony, even those in the best condition. And right now, she was not one of those ponies. Even now, laying down in a soft hospital bed, her eyes closed, she felt her weakness. Even laying still took energy. If it was true what the doctor had said, and she did have to be fired from the hospital before being fully recovered, she was a goner. Just like her house. Just like her dad.

One apple. One apple had defeated her. That one apple, so red and shining, just begging her to be eaten. She had no choice but to take it. She hadn’t eaten properly in three days. Her dad had been in bed again, unconscious after drinking too much. It had happened before, and it was nothing to worry about. Usually he would wake up after two to four days. It was just the way things went. They had always been like that. Ever since her mother had left them.

She had become familiar to hunger, and had stolen before. Usually she managed to do it without anypony noticing. And if somepony did notice, she was usually able to win them over with her eyes. But sometimes she had to run. When that happened, things sometimes went wrong. Sometimes she managed to outrun the other ponies, but other times it did not go that well. Usually she’d end up in jail or in the hospital for a couple days. At least there she could get free food, so it wasn’t too bad.

After being released from jail or fired from the hospital, she could always retreat to her home. Usually well fed, sometimes tired. But she had a safe place to sleep, so that did not matter. But this time... No home to rest, not enough strength to provide any kind of food for herself. She would have to sleep on the streets, resorting to garbage for food. That was when ponies passed away. Illness, underfed, too tired to keep themselves upright. Even though being able to walk on clouds, pegasi could still fall through them when completely exhausted. Not in houses though, they had thicker floors. Soon she would be that exhausted pony. Laying in the streets, trying to get some sleep. Drifting away, deeper and deeper into sleep, and into the clouds. And eventually, plummeting towards the ground while fast asleep.

That one apple had caused this. That one had sealed her fate. Her failed escape attempt, her first flight, her collision with that cloud. “My first flight!” She had shot up in her bed, now sitting, heavily sweating. It had been her first flight! Hooves pounded through the hallway and into her room. 

“Are you alright Rainbow Dash?” The nurse stood at the end of her bed, quickly checking all equipment to make sure nothing was wrong.

“It was my first flight! Have they got it? Did they find it? Did somepony go looking for it?” Her heart was beating in her throat, the monitor on her left beeping like crazy.

“Please calm down, Rainbow Dash,” the nurse said. Her voice was soft, not hurried this time.

“How can I be calm if I might have just lost my feather?! My last fillyhood feather? The rest of my life depends on that!” Her eyes were desperate, waiting for answers, waiting to hear they still had it. To hear it had not been lost.

The nurse looked at Rainbow, her eyes pitying. “No, we have not got it. It has been lost. I know what it means, but unfortunately it will not be for you.” Her wings moved a little bit as the nurse tried to hide it. In one of her wings, a small black feather in between all white ones. Her marefriend’s last fillyhood feather. The symbol of connection between her and her husband, or fiance. 

If her feather was lost, she would be unable to show her deepest feelings for somepony. It was a special tradition with pegasi. Instead of asking somepony for marriage, you gave them your last fillyhood feather. That feather was different from all others. Other feathers would decay, this one would not. Other feathers would get blown away, this one would not. Once given to another pegasi, and accepted by that pegasi, it would find it’s way into their wing. In between their own feathers. Firmly held in place, never to be lost. “I have got to find it.”

The nurse quickly interrupted her. It was clear this was not easy for her to tell Rainbow, but it had to be told. There was no hope. “Rainbow, you can’t.”

“Of course I can! If I go right now, it will probably still be where I got my wings!”

“Rainbow Dash, you won’t find it. The last pegasus following you, he saw your feather. He tried to get it for you. But it fell. It blew away. It fell down to earth. And it did not land where you would be able to find it again. Your feather, it’s in the Everfree.”

Slowly at first, her eyes began to fill with tears. Her vision blurred. Tears. More tears. Hundreds of small droplets of water, one by one being absorbed into the bigger mass of water, flowing down out of her eyes, over her cheeks onto the pillow. It was lost. 

“I’m sorry, Rainbow Dash,” the nurse said, slowly walking out of the room.


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Minutes took hours to pass, as time slowly went by. Everything was lost. Everything at once. Her dad, her house, and if she would manage to stay alive, it would not matter. Her future was lost. Thoughts and tears. Nothing else.

Once more hoofbeats approached her bed. Golden Knife walked into the room. "I assume they have told you what has happened?" Her throat was filled with misery, and only a small mod could be brought forth. "As I said before, we can unfortunately not discuss matters here. You will have to come over to my apartment, where I will explain you everything we know, and where I will ask you questions. You are free to answer or refuse to answer to those questions. You can stay at my apartment as long as you like."

That last sentence seemed to clear her throat. It was as if somepony had held a rope around her neck and suddenly released it. Even though she might have lost everything, this would not yet be the end. It was almost too good to be true. "Really?" she said as she started to be filled with hope again.

"Yes, really. I have discussed it with my superiours. Though it is against the rules, they have allowed me to take care of you."


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Days went by in an instance. One day after hearing the news that she would be living with Golden Knife she had been fired from the hospital. Still very weak, he had supported her with his wing, all the way to the appartment. If he hadn't, she would surely have fallen over quite a couple times. It had still been a lot for her to handle. Her life had changed drastically, and it wasn't for the better. However, Golden Knife was taking good care of her now. Soon, the appartment felt like a new home.

Her new home was a small one. It was smaller than her old house. It had only four rooms. A kitchen, a living room, one bedroom and a bathroom. The bedroom was occupied by Golden Knife. He had offered to give it to Rainbow, but she had refused. The couch was good enough for her. After she had settled in, slowly Golden Knife had begun to tell her everything about the explosion. Not all at once though. Every day, when he felt like Rainbow was ready to handle some more, he had told her parts of the story.

Her father had been followed by the Royal Guard for a while. They knew everything about him. How he was always drunk, what pubs he went to, what his history was, everything. All the good things, but more bad things. And probably not even all of them.

Golden Knife was sitting in the living room. In front of him he held a newspaper. Even though he knew almost everything that was of importance through the Royal Guard, he often choose to read the newspaper as well to see what the public knew. Not much, appearently. He folded the newspaper and put it on the table. "Rainbow, could you come here for a second, there is something else I want to tell you."

A voice from the bathroom responded. "Just a second!" The toilet flushed, and Rainbow walked out of the bathroom. Her eyes were sleepy, and her mane revealed that she had only just woken up. She let out a yawn as she walked towards the couch Golden Knife was sitting on, and sat down next to him. They had sat like this quite a couple times already. She had been staying with him for a week now, and almost every day had he told her something. "Okay, what did you wanna tell me?"

"Look, Rainbow, I have told you we had been following your father for quite a while, right? But I have not told you why." He stood up and walked towards one of the cabinets. From it, he took a couple newspaper snippets and reports from the Royal Guard. The snippets were lined black. Inside the black lines, names. The names of ponies who had passed away. With those names, small lines of text written by other ponies to memorize them. Some names were circled in red.

Rainbow looked at the snippets and the names on them. She recognised a couple of them. Ponies she had known when she was even younger. To her surprise, most of the names she recognised had a circle around them. "What do those circles mean?"

Golden Knife had sat down next to her again. "Those ponies, are ponies who have committed suicide. They seemed to have taken their own lives away." Suicide was something that was not common among ponykind. It happened, but not often. Especially not this often. "We think however, that this is false. This is the reason why you have been brought here. Why we think you are of importance to this investigation."

Rainbow was confused. "If they have committed suicide, but actually they haven't, then why are they dead?"

"They are dead. But they just didn't commit suicide. Or at least, we don't think they did. Suicide is not something that happens this often. Just look at the dates of the newspaper."

In the right bottom corner some dates were scribbled. He was right, it was all within a couple years, and there were about fifty suicides. That would be about one every two weeks.

"See? It's too frequent. And it's too regular. The suicides happened about two weeks from each other, not less than one week, and no more than three weeks apart. And as you could read in the reports, almost all the suicides were committed in the same way. You don't have to read those reports though, they are pretty detailed and not exactly fun to read."

Quickly Rainbow stopped reading the first report. He had been right. So far she had read in detail how the pegasus had broken his wings, and thrown himself off a cloud. "Are they all like this?"

"Yes Rainbow, all the same. That caused us to think we had cases of murder instead of suicide. It wasn't coincidence, it couldn't be. We started looking for connections between the victims after the eleventh case. There seemed to be none. Then we started to draw up their connections. The ponies they spoke to, they worked with, all that kind of things. And we came out by one pony every victim seemed to know. At that time, a lot of time had passed and we already had thirty five victims."

"Did you arrest him?"

"No Rainbow, we couldn't. Even though he was the only possibility, we did not have enough evidence. So we started following him."

Slowly Rainbow's mind started to shift around the pieces, trying to connect them all together.

"We followed him until the amount of cases came to fifty. We did still not have enough evidence, but we decided this could not go on like this any more. We would lock him up for four weeks, and if no more 'suicides' happened, we would know we had the right pony."

Followed him. In her mind some pieces began to fall in place.

"A team of highly trained ponies was put together to form the arrest. In front of his house they gathered. Fifteen pegasi, and five unicorns. We did not know if he would be dangerous. Even though he was usually drunk, and we knew he was at that moment, he could still form a real thread..."

Drunk... Pieces were falling together quicker and quicker.

"As the team walked up to the house, they were struck by it. Nopony could have seen it coming. Most of them were badly burned, and two of them were killed by the explosion right away."

Explosion

"Rainbow Dash, we think the murderer was"

"My father..." she finished his sentence.