Tragedy isn't a common thing to experience during one's lifetime. In fact, the only tragedy, if it can be called one, most people see is the death of their family from old age. While it can break someone, it rarely happens.

There are many things that can go wrong at any time, however. Eating food or drinking water can result in choking, sleeping with the windows closed can result in suffocation, and there is a great many a thing that can happen to anyone out of the comfort of their own home. In truth, nowhere is safe.

Those tragedies may include a sudden death, crippling situation, even witnessing of one. Mugging, robbery, maybe even rape or other kinds of torture if one is particularly unlucky.

Most people never witness any of them and only know about them from history or words of others. However, some are unfortunate to have seen one, and thus they might suffer for a long time psychologically, especially if the tragedy was traumatizing.

Victims of childhood abuse or bullying, war veterans, people of all age can suffer from a trauma. Some deal with tragedies easily, and some don't.

They might or might not recover from it.

But most importantly, people often change after experiencing a tragedy, and there is no way of knowing if that change will be for the best or the worst.

Anastasia was in the living room of Sirius' mansion. The large windows were open wide, letting in the air and the sound from the streets. Leaves were falling from the trees and found their way into the room, landing somewhere inside it. The wind was making the curtains flow in a strangely beautiful way, making them seem like they were dancing to a silent tune.

The girl was lying on a windowsill, her eyes gazing at the outside, her body covered by a thin blanket. The skies were cloudy, and just a few rays of the sun were able to fall onto the ground. A soft wind was blowing, making the fallen leaves fly and swirl through the air. The ponies were going around as usual, chatting joyfully along the way. A few ponies were working in the streets, collecting the leaves into plastic bags. Pegasi could be seen high in the sky, pushing the clouds around.

Anastasia sighed deeply, her eyes almost closed as she rested. There were dark circles around her eyes, her mane was slightly messy, and her overall form was thinner than before. Her chest was rising steadily but slowly, each her breath calm and long.

The weather reminded her of the early days of her friendship with Stanislav. The two would often take a walk after the classes, enjoying their time together. During the autumn, they would spend their time walking around the town and chatting about anything their minds could come up with. Unlike other kids that were playing games and generally spending their time actively, Anastasia and Stanislav preferred calmness and serenity, a trait the two of them shared. It was a pleasant and simple time the girl held close to her heart.

Back then, she already suspected him not being entirely right in the head. Unlike other kids, he was mostly silent and rarely joyful outside of his time with Anastasia. At the time, she didn't even know if he had any other friends. He was new in the town and no one knew him as well. While he tried to hide his emotions from everyone, they sometimes slipped through as it showed on one occasion.

"What about your parents?" Anastasia asked him as they were going through a forest.

He paused in his step for a brief moment, which didn't go unnoticed by the girl. His face darkened, his figure became slightly slouched. His eyes flashed a look of remembering a suppressed and distant memory, his teeth clenching hard. His fingers rapidly tapped against his things but he forced them to cease doing that in a few moments.

"Is something wrong?" she asked cautiously after the two walked for five minutes.

"...My father died in a car crash." Stanislav reluctantly replied, hiding his emotions yet again. Hands in the pockets of his jacket, he blankly stared ahead. "I don't really want to talk about it."

"...Um..." Anastasia was at loss of what to say. At least it answered the question of why she had only seen his mother. "I'm sorry, I..."

"No need." the boy cut her off, raising his voice slightly. "It's fine. You didn't know." he raised his hand and scratched the scar on his forehead, frowning slightly. "Just..." he looked at Anastasia, his eyes showing pain. "Don't ask about it, alright?"

"Y-yeah, alright." the girl replied awkwardly, and the two resumed their walk.

Not wanting to provoke her newest friend, Anastasia shifted the theme of their talk into a better route, and eventually the two were joyfully discussing something she could no longer remember. However, she remembered that one incident even without bringing it up ever again. She had never found out what truly happened during the car crash the boy experienced just about a month prior to his arrival.

Their friendship stood strong for two whole years. While Stanislav did have some shortcomings, including his temper and unsocial behavior, not to mention his possessiveness with Anastasia, in the end those two years were the best she had ever had. In fact, the boy was her best friend up until he separated from her.

After they parted ways, he became even more easily angered. His behavior changed for the worse, and Anastasia lost almost all her desire to be friends with him.

The girl sighed yet again. She wished those years could return. Maybe she would have been able to find a different way to approach Stanislav, maybe even love him.

In the end, he was just someone very troubled and needed help. Not just help, but love and care.

Anastasia remembered the look on his face when she didn't return his love. It was defeat, immense sadness, fear, and shame. He left swiftly, barely saying a word to her. He had been worse and worse ever since she rejected him, and in truth — she felt bad about doing it. She couldn't understand his breadth of emotional attachment to her, and she realized things could go differently between the two if she instead gave him a chance. They would have dated and she would have been able to find out whether he was serious about having a loving relationship with her or not. Maybe the two could even become a couple later on.

Unfortunately, it didn't go that way. Anastasia found herself thinking that if it did, Stanislav wouldn't kill himself.

She sighed deeply, regrets and blame setting in. She could be less judgmental of him and give him an honest chance, but instead she decided to outright reject someone who loved her very dearly. She knew how badly he craved love, and while his ways were sometimes strange, he meant good. Maybe if she helped him understand how to deal with love, he wouldn't become a hateful being.

In truth, she thinking about it because she was simply jealous of the relationship Iclyn and Sirius had. She could've had it instead but she missed her chance, and so the boy she used to know as Stanislav showed his great love and immense care not to her but to someone else.

She closed her eyes completely. Maybe some sleep would make her feel better.

Iclyn was standing in the snowy field, her eyes wide, her ears folded, and her maw slightly open. The two cars that have recently crashed were unmoving, smoke coming from one of them. No one else could be seen nearby and all was silent save for the wind. It was blowing the snow into Iclyn's face, stinging her with an icy, sharp breath.

She stood there for what seemed like eternity, staring at the cars. Slowly, she blinked, and then dashed to the wreckage, hoping to help. She couldn't use her wing yet but she galloped as fast as she could, raising the snow into the air. She would often fall into the snow piles but she would get up and gallop again, not stopping for a second, her eyes fixated on the crash site.

She was a few steps away from the cars when suddenly the door of one of them opened. A familiar human boy exited the car, his bloody hand gripping the door. Skinny, pale, having dark-brown middle-length hair, and a pair of dark-green eyes, wide open. A fresh wound could be seen on his face, stretching from the bridge of the nose all the way to the left eye, and yet not touching the latter. Blood was streaming from the wound, painting his clothes red. He was noticeable taller, his facial features more masculine than what Iclyn remembered seeing just a few minutes ago.

He turned around and looked at the wreckage. Iclyn noticed another, much more unsettling detail about his appearance — his left foot was turned ninety degrees to the left, and his left leg was awkwardly bent. However, he didn't seem to notice it at all.

Slowly, Stanislav limped around the vehicles and looked at the second car. There was a person inside it, coughing and groaning in pain as a piece of metal jutted through his side.

"I'm so dead, I'm so fucking dead..." he muttered, holding a phone in his shaking hands and trying to dial a number.

The boy stood silently, staring at the man. The smell of blood, iron, and gasoline were in the air, mixed with the freshness of a snowy day. Snow fell on Stanislav's face, thawing almost instantly and rolling down his face as droplets of water, collecting the blood in the way.

The boy looked around and found a sharp piece of metal. He picked it up and gripped it tightly. He tried not to look at the wrecked car he came out of, especially not the driver's place. It was completely destroyed, his father nowhere to be seen among the metal, plastic and glass. He could only see blood and pieces of bone.

Stanislav knew that he couldn't let the one who hurt his family get away.

An eye for an eye.

The boy limped to the car that crashed into his family. The piece of metal was being held tightly in his hand. He could already feel the pain coming, and he knew he must do everything before it comes fully.

"Don't do it!" Iclyn yelled, understanding what Stanislav was about to do. "You don't have to!"

"I absolutely had to." a voice replied to her. "Vengeance is what makes sure bad people don't get away. It has been working like that since the inception of humanity. Revenge is the ultimate form of justice, and you will accept it.

"I was sitting there, in the family car, driving from school. I watched as someone crashed into us, squishing and breaking my father. I saw a piece of his skull, one of his eyes staring right at me. I knew I had to do something, and I did what humans are very good at doing. I killed."

Stanislav opened the door to the man inside the car, and then stabbed him in the neck. The man's eyes widened and looked at the boy, his hands desperately trying to get the piece of metal out of his throat. He was choking on his own blood, gurgling loudly.

"Don't hurt my family." Stanislav said quietly, stumbling back from the car. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bent matchbox. He pulled out one match and ignited it. Disposing of the evidence always reduces the chances of getting caught.

Meanwhile, Iclyn stared in shock at the boy as he threw the lit match in a pile of gasoline that collected underneath the car. The liquid ignited, the fire rose.

The pegasus watched as Stanislav limped back to his car. He awkwardly stumbled and fell into the snow at the side of the road, strength leaving him as pain overcame his mind. His brain reacted to the intense sensation and immediately shut down.

Iclyn sat down, tears of disbelief rolling down her cheeks. She gagged, fighting the urge to vomit as the smell of burning flesh reached her nostrils. She folded her ears and averted her eyes from the awful scene.

"S-Sirius..." she mumbled, sobbing. Her tears fell onto the ground, turning into ice soon. Her wings were limp, almost lying on the ground as she cried for the one she loved. She cried because of what he did when he was young, way too young for this. She cried because of the tragedy that befell on him, making him go too far.

It was not self-defense. It was not an accident.

It was murder.

Author's Notes:

Now we all know that Sirius is a murderer, and he committed his first one when he was about twelve.

It's not the worst thing. He had to witness his father dying in front of him, and dying terribly. It's not something anyone would easily forget.