Sadness is Universal

by DubstepIsAmazing

Truth (Part 1)

Rainbow stared at Discord as she tried to process what she just heard him say. It seemed like the unpleasant surprises would just keep on coming. Her mouth opened but nothing came out. Disbelief had silenced her.

"It's very unfortunate, actually," Discord responded while sitting at the base of a tree. It was littered with flight notes with red X's on them. "She looks up to you more than you'll ever know, Rainbow Dash."

Joining him on the ground, she picked up a picture of her with her hoofprint and signature. It read:

To Scootaloo,
The wind beneath my wings and the best little sister I could ever ask for!

She almost began to sob on the spot. Looking at Discord in confusion, she spoke.

"How long...how long has she been living like this?"

Discord put his hand to his chin. "Your guess is as good as mine. If I had to make a prediction however...I'd say about three to four years max. She arrived shortly before I was reformed."

Rainbow's heart hurt as he finished his sentence. Of course, it was a guess, but the pegasus wouldn't be able to live with herself if something happened to her and she didn't know where to find her. Even if her 'home' was barely past the edge of the forest, there were still plenty of things to worry about! The cold winters, the vicious predators lurking at dusk, the thornbushes that populated the area...and these were just things found on the surface.

"I need to process this," Rainbow said, "You're telling me that she's been living like this for almost half a decade? And she didn't tell me?!"

"There's more to this than meets the eye," Discord said, "You're ignoring all of the things that led to this."

Tears flowed down the cyan-colored pony's mane as she picked up the different notes that she kept. Diaries, flight techniques, letters from fake addresses and more.

"She has almost six thousand flight attempts?!"

She looked at the latest one. "...and she hasn't succeeded once..."

Discord snapped his fingers to teleport them back to the hospital. It was quiet now; Fluttershy slept calmly outside Scootaloo's room. The two of them appeared to be at her bedside. Rainbow Dash was relieved to hear the beep of the heart monitor; she was still alive! Discord looked at her grimly.

"Rainbow Dash, let me begin by asking you a question: out of the hundreds of thousands of times you've spent time with Scootaloo, have you ever taken a close look at her body?"

Rainbow Dash looked at him, shocked. "Whaddya mean? Nothing's wrong with her body."

"She can't fly, so there must be something wrong. More on that later. However, you've carried her to simulate flying before. You've also given her hugs and had your forearms around her and the like."

Rainbow crossed her arms. "So? There's nothing wrong with her!"

"From the naked eye, that's correct. The fur conceals a lot."

Rainbow didn't want to know where he was going with this but waited for him to continue.

"Take a look at Scootaloo's neck."

Rainbow moved closer to her sister and squinted to try to see anything that looked out of the ordinary. Like Discord said, the amount of fur she had made it difficult to see. But as her eyes glossed over one area on the left side of her neck, she saw a little something. Moving closer, she saw that little something wasn't so little. Although it was faint, she saw the beginning of a scar that started on the left side of her neck and, following its direction, it stopped a little under the middle of her neck. Despite it being about two inches long, Rainbow felt sick to her stomach.

"How'd she get that," she muttered as she sat down to keep from falling. The hits just kept coming. Her world was spinning. Discord didn't look at her.

"There's more," he said. Snapping his fingers, he activated zero gravity for Scootaloo. She was still hooked up to the various devices in the room, but she was floating. "Look at her back."

Wobbling to her feet, Rainbow looked at the floating filly's back and almost lost every shade of her mane. Her back was populated with various scars and bruises that weren't visible to the naked eye because of the fur. Although they've all healed, it didn't take much to figure out that the years before Scootaloo came to Ponyville were arguably the worst times of her life. Everything was getting blurry for Rainbow Dash as she tried not to lose consciousness from surprise, fear, and anger. Discord activated zero gravity for her to keep from hurting herself.

"Indeed the life before Ponyville was a grim one for dear Scootaloo...it's one of the reasons she doesn't answer questions about her parents."

Rainbow Dash tried to pay attention to Discord's story to keep from passing out; he gently set Scootaloo down as he turned to Rainbow Dash.

"It begins when she was five years old..."

With the snap of his fingers, they were both teleported to Canterlot. It was the wintertime and they could just barely make out a house in front of them. Walking to the window, they saw Scootaloo on a computer, reading an article. It read:

Rainbow Dash Wins Masters Circuit as the Youngest Pegasus to win in History!

Rainbow Dash smiled at Scootaloo's joy before going wide-eyed. In her celebration of the event, Scootaloo began to fly around the room in glee! She had never seen her sister so happy before.

"You were her idol when she was at such a young age, Rainbow Dash. Your advancement of being a female pegasus in a male world made her so happy and optimistic for the future. Of course, she could fly too. However..."

The front door opened with a loud BANG!

"...that didn't last very long."

She couldn't hear anything in the flashback, but she saw a pegasus with Scootaloo's color scheme enter the house, stumbling. He was clearly intoxicated, as he was holding a half-empty bottle of liquor. Scootaloo excitedly rushed to her father and told her the news. Rainbow's heart was thumping wildly; she was clearly worried.

"Her father was a drinker," she muttered in disbelief, "She looks so pure and so full of glee!"

Discord nodded. "A heavy drinker at that. It's been his go-to ever since her mother left him for another pegasus."

Rainbow gasped.

"Yes. He had no idea. No clue what he couldn't offer or what was wrong with him. All he knew was that one day, he received a letter in the mail that explained the whole ordeal."

Rainbow walked back, heartbroken.

"He didn't know why until..."

Scootaloo's father grabbed his daughter's neck and threw her to the floor.

"...he thought it was Scootaloo's fault."

Rainbow gasped and began to pound at the window at the sight of what he was about to do to her. Although it wasn't audible, she could hear her screams and cries for help.

"NO!!! SCOOTALOO! NONONONONONO!!!"

With tears of frustration streaming down her face, she looked to Discord. "DISCORD, DO SOMETHING!!"

"I'm afraid I cannot. This has already happened. I can see events from the past, not change them."

Gritting her teeth, she charged into the house as Scootaloo was being beaten with a now-broken glass bottle across her back.

"GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF HER," she shrieked, lunging at the father...only to go right through him.

"You cannot do anything about this, Rainbow."

She turned to face him with gritted teeth and fury in her eyes but gasped when she saw what happened next. The final two blows landed on her wings. The jagged edge of the battle cut right through the middle of them, causing Scootaloo to scream as loud as she could with tears streaming down her face for what seemed like eternity. He put her down and, although Rainbow couldn't hear him, she knew what he said:

You took everything away from me...so I'll take everything away from you. I'll be darned if you're ever able to fly again...now get out of my sight.

As the father fainted from intoxication, Scootaloo ran upstairs to her room and jumped on her bed, letting another torrent of tears and cries flow. She tried to flap her wings, but every flap caused pain to shoot through her body. On top of this, she couldn't get off the bed; she was flightless. The wounds the two saw in the emergency room were now fresh as blood trickled down her body.

Rainbow put her hoof to her mouth as she trembled with remorse and anguish. Nothing was wrong with her personally, but seeing her number one fan put through this hurt all the same. Discord snapped his fingers, teleporting them back to Scootaloo's side in the present.

"This continued for four years until she mustered up the courage to run away from that house, from HIM. It did nothing for her aerially, but as you know, she soon became one of the fastest ponies on land, second only to Pinkie Pie."

Rainbow stayed silent, still thinking about the events she just witnessed.

He pointed at her scooter. "By then, she had saved enough money to purchase this scooter. She took it and rode it all the way here, taking as much as she could carry. Parking the scooter in Everfree forest, she trekked to the entrance of Ponyville and saw what there was to see. She enrolled in Cheerilee's school, where she met Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom, who were fellow blank-flanks. They teamed up and became the Cutie Mark Crusaders after about a year of trying what they could to get their cutie marks. She met and became close friends with the rest of the Elements of Harmony and met the princesses themselves on some occasions."

He turned to Rainbow Dash. "She loved spending time with you the most. You had no idea how happy she was when you agreed to take her under your wing."

He sighed. "But she still wasn't able to fly. So, she went to Everfree Forest to practice. It hurt almost every time, but each time she used her wings, the pain lessened and lessened. You were her primary source for tips on flying. The multitude of papers you saw back there? Those were all from you."

Rainbow was both touched and shocked at the telling of her story.

"She couldn't afford to live anywhere else, so she called Everfree her home. She declined Fluttershy's offer to stay in her house but she kept a key just in case."

"Why? She could get out of the dangerous woods whenever she wanted!"

"Because she was trying to impress you. She wanted to show you how she started from nothing and worked her way up. Many a winter she spent outside," he said with a frown. "Your talk of how awesome she was made her determined to be incredible."

Another tear fell down Rainbow's cheek.

"And on today, her thirteenth birthday, her final hopes of flying were dashed. She realized her father was right about her never flying again. With that, she had no more dreams to chase. She was alone. So, what'd she do?"

Silence.

"In the finale of her birthday celebration, she changed a potentially successful moment into a concealed suicide. And that's how we ended up here. Her depression almost took her life."

Just then, Scootaloo's eyes fluttered open.

"SCOOTALOO!" Rainbow almost shouted, nuzzling her as tears fell down her face onto Scootaloo's. She looked at Discord.

"You told her everything...didn't you?"

Discord nodded.

"Rainbow Dash...I--I--"

"It's okay, now, Scootaloo. Everything will be okay," Rainbow responded as Scootaloo sobbed into her neck.

Author's Note:

Next chapter will be about Spike's truth.

Comments

[Love able chaos]

Damn that was dark.

[redsopine]

Ok I'm just saying this now if no chapter in this or any other of this series has rainbow with a bat smacking that guy upside the head I'm gonna be mad