Guardians of Many Hues

by TadStone

Unusual Pillow Talk (Yellow Guardian 1, Orange Guardian 3)

Unusual Pillow Talk (Yellow Guardian 1, Orange Guardian 3)

Scootaloo knew the way to her friend’s bedroom by heart, even in the dark. She had spent enough nights at the farm at the regular sleepovers. All of the bedrooms were next to each other on the second floor, so she made sure to tiptoe over the creaky planks. The trick was to only step on every third plank. She had been the first one to find out in the attempt on being a Cutie Mark Crusader Ninja. A cutie mark hadn’t appeared, though. Or it was just concealed very well...

Everything on the farm had too many apples for Scootaloo’s taste. This was also true for Apple Bloom’s bedroom: the apple wallpaper, the apple bed, the apple sheets... There were even edible apples everywhere, something she didn’t care about for first time in her life.

Silently, she closed the door behind her and dug into her saddlebags to retrieve the bits she had just gotten from Rainbow Dash, before discarding the bag to the floor as silently as possible. Scootaloo placed the money onto the bed before jumping up herself.

Apple Bloom would never admit to it, but she had a very ticklish spot right behind her shoulder blades. A first soft testing touch drew a few giggles from the sleeping foal. It took hardly any movement from Scootaloo at all to leave the yellow filly before her trashing and laughing and clearly awake. Her mission was done.

The victim set up, panting heavily, looking at the intruder like somepony who had seen a ghost.

“What are ya doing here Scootaloo. Ya know this is ma bed, not yers,” Apple Bloom inquired in her usual southern accent she had adopted from her big sister.

“I got your money and wanted to give it to you right away!” Scootaloo held up the bag with a smile that spread from ear to ear and began counting up the sum, using ten Bit coins.

“Wait, wait, what? How’d ya get in? How’d ya get that much Bits all of a sudden?”

The orange Pegasus handed over the pieces before she answered “Rainbow.”

Apple Bloom shook her head as if this would rearrange her thoughts in a way they could make sense out of that statement. It didn’t really help. Her confusion came back up as a single word: “What?”

“I was sleeping at Rainbow’s place and she brought us here, cause she had stuff to do with Applejack. She also gave me the money. She said we’re family now!” Scootaloo beamed.

The yellow earth pony shook her head again. It wasn’t just the hour of the day keeping her from comprehending. Her friend hadn’t shed any light onto the matter, more like closed the curtains and sealed off the doors. She just continued to gape at pegasus, missing any witty reply.

Scootaloo’s grin faded a little, her eyes wandering off to one of the green flower ornaments decorating the wall.

“I’ve been lying to you and Sweetie Belle.”

“What about?” Despite being woken only minutes ago in the middle of the night, Apple Bloom was now wide awake. Not just because the situation was best described as downright bizarre. Part of her still thought this was a weird dream and she would wake up any moment, but also because the instant change of mood in her friend told her something was wrong. While she did not possess the strong empathy of her sister and she had only known Scootaloo for a year, she could still read her like a book.

Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom had suspected that something was odd about Scootaloo’s life for a long time now. Evasive was a term that did not even start to describe her friend whenever they had tried to find out about her family. The young earth pony remembered one special occasion when they had gone as far as demanding to have a sleepover at Scootaloo’s near the summer break. Not hard to tell it didn’t end well, with the orange pegasus running off and not showing up for crusader meetings for over a week.

Afterwards she had tried to turn to her sister, who informed her that she and Rainbow had already taken every possible way short of secretly following the filly to get intelligence about Scootaloo without any success, but that they had an eye out for her and not to worry too much. Sweetie Belle and she had learned to avoid the issue afterwards and never talked about it again.

Showing up in the middle of night with Rainbow and money sure had something to do with this. She had to make this as easy as possible for her crusading buddy, so she crawled over and sat next to Scootaloo, who had remained quiet after the last question because she couldn’t bring up the courage after all. Apple Bloom made sure to secure a hoof around the pegasus before she spoke.

“It’s ‘bout ya family?”

Scootaloo’s gaze came back to her friend.

“How do you know?”

The earth pony squeezed her companion.

“We’re ya friends. You never talked of them and ya ran away when we did. You never have the means to pay for anything and everything you use is borrowed or gifted. ‘Cept for ya old scooter. We are all worried ‘bout ya and sad we can’t help. Whatever is on ya heart, Ah’m listening.”

“I am an orphan like you are, but I have no other family, so I grew up at the orphanage. I never knew anything else,” Scootaloo began to retell her life story for a second time today, this time including her life with Dash and less details on her mistreatment. Somehow she felt better every time she told her story. She could feel the weight of months spent lying and hiding parts of her life being lifted off her by some mysterious force. It wasn’t over yet, but she didn’t feel alone anymore. She had a family and very good friends.

Apple Bloom listened intently to every word, now and then stroking her friend’s mane for comfort, especially when waiting through a long pause when Scootaloo was lost in light sobbing or her own thoughts. Apple Bloom went from shock to outrage to happiness, all within an hour. She was sad and happy for Scootaloo at the same time, a very confusing and exhausting feeling.

In the end she promised her friend that they would tell Sweetie Belle together, right before the exertion of the day and the late hour took its toll on both of them. They didn’t notice when Applejack came in and tucked them in with gentle and trained hooves, like they hadn’t noticed her peeking through the door now and then during their talk, checking on them like an invisible patron.

Comments

[LeopardCay]

And i thought i had the D'aww flu!
Now its certain!

[Sky Charmer]

3105026
I like your avatar picture. Can I have a link?