Scootaloo's Mother

by englishwitch

Chapter 9

Scootaloo’s Mother
Fanfic by Englishwitch

Chapter 9

Apartment 56D. That meant apartment D on floor 56. So Scootaloo was extremely pleased to discover the building had an elevator.
Not an elevator by the usual standards; a metal cage run by a counter weight system worked by earth ponies. This elevator was a platform made of feather light cirrus clouds inside a hollow tube —also made of cloud, as were most things in Cloudsdale— which had a warm and gentle thermal wind blowing through it. By sitting on the light cirrus cloud a pegasus could use the thermals to up though the floors of the building with the absolute minimum amount of wing effort. Even Scootaloo’s small wings were enough to carry her up through the floors.

So there she was; on floor 56, standing in front of the door to apartment D. Scootaloo tried to convince herself that the feeling in the pit of her stomach was being caused by the altitude. It felt like a dozen Parasprites were dancing a polka in her gut.
“C’mon kid,” she tried to imitate the voice of Rainbow Dash. The polychromatic pony wouldn’t he nervous or afraid, she’d be awesome; as always. “You can do this, just raise your hoof and knock.”

Yet Scootaloo didn’t move. Now that she was here she couldn’t bring herself to do it. All this time her thoughts had been about finding her mother. Find the adoption forms, to find her mother. Get to Manehatten, to find her mother. Find the paperwork, get to Cloudsdale, Find the right area of the city, find the apartment, all just to find her mother. She would find her mother, ask her questions, find her answers and learn who she was.

But what if it didn’t happen that way? She’d chosen to not dwell on the thought before but there was no stopping it now. It was shouting through her skull. The mare Rosewing had given her up when she was a foal, maybe not long after she’d been born. What had been the reason she’d made that decision? What if it was simply because she hadn’t wanted at foal. What if time hadn’t changed that attitude and she still didn’t want to know Scootaloo? What if she sent her away with no answers? Or worse; what if she told Scootaloo some terrible reason she’d given up her filly? Could there be something wrong with Scootaloo that nopony had told her about? Was that why she still couldn’t fly when many other pegasi her own age were able to glide around with ease?

Scootaloo curled up and lay on the floor, trying to stop herself hyperventilating. A hundred ‘What if?’ thoughts were charging around in her brain and none of them were good. She couldn’t do this. She should just go home and forget about all of this. She shouldn’t have come here in the first place. It was stupid to think the parent who hadn’t wanted her in the first place would want her now.

Before she could move however, the door to the apartment opened. A surprised looking teenage pony stared down at her. She was a pink coated pegasus with a sand coloured mane, magenta eyes and a songbird cutie mark. “I...um....can I help you?”

Scootaloo’s panic was forgotten. A new panic was starting to take its place. Had she got the wrong apartment? Maybe Derpy had got it wrong? Or worse, was this mare a daughter of Rosewing and, therefore, her older sister?

The filly climbed to her hooves. Her whole body started to tremble. “I....is.....does....Rosewing live here?”

The teenage pony nodded. “Yeah, but she’s not here right now. She shouldn’t be long, she usually gets back from work around now.”

As though she were an actor waiting for her cue, Rosewing appeared. She flew through an opening at the far end of the hallway, which served as both a window and a landing pad for pegasi who didn’t need to take the elevator. Scootaloo had never seen her before but guessed it was her. Who else would be turning up at this already difficult time? She was a yellow mare with a pink mane and tail. Her cutie mark was a black cloud with three silver snowflakes. She stared at the teenager and the little filly, especially at the filly. The orange coat and purple hair made her breath catch in her throat. She stared at the filly, unblinking, and the filly stared back with the same fixed expression.

The teenager stared between the two ponies. She knew something seemed to be going on between them, but chose not to press the matter. “Miss Rosewing, this filly was looking for you. Yo-yo is down for his nap, I gotta go.” She disappeared into the apartment for a second and reappeared with a saddle bag strapped to her middle. “I’ve got a....homework.”

Rosewing snapped out of her staring contest with Scootaloo and glanced to the teen filly. “Okay Nightingale. Same time tomorrow?”

Nightingale nodded. She spread her wings and moved to the opening.

“And good luck with your date.” The older mare giggled as Nightingale blushed, her pink coat turning scarlet around her cheeks.

“Thanks.” She said over her shoulder as she leapt into the air and glided out of sight.

“Nice girl.” Rosewing commented in a distracted tone. “Great babysitter.”

“Baby?” Scootaloo barely whispered the word but Rosewing still heard her. The stare she had been snapped out of a moment ago threatened to return.

She slowly stepped toward the door. “The hallway isn’t a place to talk. Why don’t you come inside?”

Scootaloo followed the mare, a stunned silence had fallen over her.

The apartment showed all the signs of being a family place. There was a scattering of toys around the floor, children’s books piled on one end of a cloud sofa, bags of clean nappies and baby bottles were by a coffee table.

“Take a seat.” Rosewing indicated the sofa. Her voice sounded distant, almost distracted. She was trying to sound calm; like she knew what she was doing, but in truth she was panicked and trying her hardest not to freak out. “I’ll just-” she stopped as a small shape moved in the corner of her eye.

From out of the nursery came a tiny colt foal. He couldn’t have been more than a year old. He had a periwinkle coat and chestnut brown hair, and the biggest green eyes Scootaloo had ever seen. He tottered on his four hooves uneasily, as though he’d just learned to walk. His tiny little wings fluttered like a bee’s, carrying him for brief points across the floor. He seemed to like the walking more than the flying though. It was probably a novelty for him, pegasi could usually fly before they could walk.
His face lit up when he saw Rosewing. “Mama.” He fluttered his wings, hovering up off the cloud floor before rushing over to her. Rosewing scooped him up in her hooves, hugging the little colt tightly.

“Hello little one. Yes mommy’s home. Now, come along, you should be taking your nap.” She carried the foal back into the nursery.

Scootaloo sat on the sofa, dumbfounded. She had just seen a little colt greet his mother. That same mother had carried the colt into his bedroom for a nap. Her head swam as new possibilities occurred to her. Rosewing was her mother. She was also that colt’s mother. They shared a mother so that made him....she was usually better at working things like this out but the surprise seemed to have stopped her brain from working.....her brother. She felt a wave of disorientation flow through her as the fact sank into her brain like a boulder crash landing in a pond. She had a brother. Oh buck, she had a brother! Why the hay would Rosewing ever want to know her older child? She had a perfectly good colt, why would she need a filly turning up looking for a family? She already had one.

Scootaloo was about to move for the door, it would be better to leave now; there would be no tears, no arguments, no fuss. They could all go on with their normal lives and forget everything that had happened. Before she could move however, Rosewing returned. She was silent as she came into the room and took a seat in a comfy cloud chair. She let out a long and deep sigh before turning to Scootaloo. “So,” she said calmly. “what brought you here today, to look for me?”

Scootaloo took a deep, shaking, breath before she began telling her tale. Beginning with her name, where she lived and who her adoptive parents were. She moved on to discovering her adoption. Rosewing for her part stayed silent over her surprise at the filly being unable to guess she was adopted. Scootaloo moved on to her discovery of the paperwork in Bonbon’s basement, then the trip to Manehatten and the meeting with Matron Foster at the home. She didn’t skip on the details of her breaking back into the home and stealing the paperwork. She gave a brief description of her adventure through Cloudsdale. “I did it all,” she said finally, “came all this way, to find my birth mother.” Then with a stuttering voice she asked the questions she both feared and desperately wanted to ask, “are you...my mother?”

Rosewing was quiet for some time. A worrying amount of time for Scootaloo, who felt every second pass like it was an hour. When she finally spoke it wasn’t to answer the filly’s question, it was to begin telling a story. “When I was a teenager, younger than Nightingale,” she smirked with a dry laugh, “barely past being a filly. It was my birthday actually. And my colt-friend and I, Nimbus, were having a little....let’s say....private party.” Both she and Scootaloo shuffled around in their seats uneasily. “We got carried away and....have you learned sex-ed at school yet?” Scootaloo nodded. “Then I suppose you can guess what happened.” She was glad to skip over the finer details. She hadn’t spoken about them to anypony and had never expected to be speaking them to Scootaloo of all ponies.
“I became pregnant.” She sighed. “My parents were old fashioned and didn’t approve of pregnancy without wedlock. They demanded to know who the father was but I didn’t want to tell them. Nimbus didn’t force himself on me and I was more than willing to proceed, knowing the risks. He was a high-flyer in high school, star athlete. We were still a year from graduating but he was up for a sports scholarship to get him into college. He could have been a great hoofball player, a Wonderbolt, anything. He was smart, with a college degree behind him he could have done....anything.” She was well aware she was repeating the word ‘anything’ perhaps too often. She was also very much aware she was getting off topic. “If he was forced to marry me, just for the sake of keeping my parents happy, it would have ruined all of that. Nopony can waste time putting himself through college when he has a wife and baby to support. When my parents couldn’t get the answers they were looking for they disowned me. Threw me out and never spoke to me again. I had to move in with my grandparents in Cumulus Villa.”

She was silent for a full minute before speaking again. “Then....I....” She sighed. “I came to the most difficult decision I’ve ever made in my life; to give up the foal for adoption. I had nothing back then; I was a high school filly, I had no job, no prospects, I had no home except what the generosity of my grandparents gave me. I couldn’t provide for myself, let alone a foal. I had no future and that was no future for a child.

“Even though I know it was the best decision, I’ve regretted it every day.” She looked to Scootaloo and the filly saw the sincerity in her eyes. “By the time the filly was born though, I’d signed the paperwork and there was no going back.” Tears rose in her eyes. “When they handed me that beautiful baby filly I barely had time to name her and have one picture taken before, as agreed, she was taken away from me.” She wiped her eyes with a hoof. “Excuse me.” She hurried off her chair and trotted out of sight down a hallway. Scootaloo was taken aback by the mares sudden departure. The surprise barely had a chance to pass before the mare returned. She held a tissue to her eyes with one hoof and a photograph in her wing.

Instead of returning to the chair, Rosewing came across the room and sat down on the sofa next to Scootaloo. She held out the photograph for the filly to take. Scoots stared at the image as she took it in her hooves.
The Rosewing in the picture actually looked older than the one in front of her. This was probably because of how haggard the Rosewing in the photo was, her mane was a mess, dark marks under her half closed eyes, her forehead shone with a layer of sweat. She was in all ways drained and exhausted. It probably had a lot to do with the new born foal she was holding. The tiny filly was half obscured by a blanket but Scootaloo could see her little orange face and the tiny puff of a purple mane.

“When they took her away from me I....lost myself for a while.” Rosewing continued as Scootaloo examined the photo. “After carrying her for eleven months I...I changed my mind.” She shook her head. “That’s something of an understatement. I was desperate to get her back. I fought. The doctors and nurses they....they had to hold me down and sedate me. It was the last time I saw the foal.

“After a year or so, and some counselling, I began to feel it had all been for the best. The foal had been placed with a loving family who could provide for her better than I could. I began the long road of making my own life. I finished high school and started weather training college. I always had an eye for fine details so I specialised in snowflakes. When I graduated I started work at the weather factory as a snowflake maker. Each flake is hoof-made you know.

“After my grandparents passed I inherited the house in Cumulus Villa. They had precious little else to give me. I sold it and moved in here. After that my life became quite ordinary and mundane. I worked in the factory and lived in my home. Until two years ago, I met a stallion. We began to pursue a relationship and grew quite close. Our relationship did not last, it happens. We grew apart and, eventually, he moved away to manage a weather team in Vanhoover. It was a few months later I discovered I was pregnant. Yo-yo, you’ve seen him, was born over a year ago. His father sends Bits to help out with bills every month.” She shook her head as she realised she had been off topic for a little while now. Scootaloo had said nothing to put her back on the subject.

“I’ve done many things in my life and I’ve met many ponies and I love my little colt. But I never, not once, stopped wondering what happened to the little filly I had to give up.” She placed a hoof on Scootaloo’s shoulder and looked at her with sadness, and curiosity, in her eyes. “I gave that foal up so she could have a chance at a better life, so she could be happy and well provided for...So...are you happy?”

Scootaloo cast her eyes down and thought hard about how to answer the question. How to answer? Did she even know the answer? “I don’t know.” She admitted. “I....” she sighed. “I guess I feel....I feel like something is missing. A part of me. I....I thought that if I found my birth mom....I....I’d find that missing piece.”

Rosewing smiled and shook her head slowly. If she knew the filly better she might have hugged her. “That comes from knowing yourself. What makes a pony is their family. Not the pony who birthed them but the ones who raised them. Be it a parent, step parent, adoptive parent or relative. These guardians have a hoof in raising them but they are not the only ones. Sisters, brothers, half-brothers and sisters, step brothers and sisters, cousins and, yes, even friends. Those who you are around every day, those you trust above all others, those you love, those who’s advice and opinions you trust. They are the ones who help raise you, with their love, advice and the experiences you share with them, help make you the filly you are and mare you’ll become. Those who love you and who you love, they are your true family. Not some mare or stallion who’s DNA you happen to share.”

She was silent for a minute, letting Scootaloo absorb the speech.

Then she repeated her earlier question. “Are you happy?”

Scootaloo was silent for longer. She was reminded of something Apple Bloom had said to her a day ago. It was very similar to what Rosewing had just said. She hadn’t believed the words, at least not entirely, back then. Yet, now, thinking hard and sincerely, she saw what her friend had been trying to say.

Finally, Scootaloo nodded her head. “Yes.”

Author's Note:

Did I lay it on too thick? I can never tell ;)

Comments

[Cold Spike]

My feels hurt...

[Sinful Pickle]

You can never lay the feels on too thick.

[Quinntus79]

That was really cute. Onto the last chapter.

[Fluttershyisacutegal]

ngh my heart