Tawney usually spent her nights locked up in her room, reading the odd book or writing the odd journal entry, but she rarely ever went out with anyone else.  She lived with her parents and, though she was certainly an adult, didn't ever feel the need to emancipate herself from them.  Her father had always been, frankly, somewhat abusive, but her mother always made it feel so much better with love and spoiling.  She was afraid to leave them behind; even though she'd be rid of the mental and physical abuse, it would mean that she'd also be rid of the love.  Hollowness was the one thing she really feared, and she knew (or rather thought) that without her parents she'd slowly drift away into a husk of a pony that would never have a hope in the world of finding anypony else to love her.

One particular night she didn't write or read, or do much of anything.  She just sat in front of her vanity mirror, a present from her mother after a particularly brutal 'punishment' for coming home late, and examined her fresh black eye.  Cheek tilted toward the mirror, she tried her best to open up her beautiful hazel eye, but couldn't manage to get the purplish lump to separate itself.  She took out her hair brush and started to comb her dark blue mane down the way she always kept it; hanging like a curtain in front of whichever eye happened to be black that week.  This was always a calming time for her; for whatever reason she found hiding the abuse of her home life to be somewhat relaxing.  Even looking in the mirror, with her dull beige coat covered up with an absurdly contrasting blue mane, she felt relieved to know that she could look beautiful regardless of how broken inside (and outside) she really was.  

Her horn always acted as a great divider for her mane, so she didn't need to try too hard to brush her hair the way she needed it (and always managed to get it perfectly each time), but nevertheless she could spend hours and hours brushing.  Her parents were fighting in the next room, but she hummed as loudly as she could to try and drown it out; her favorite tune in the world was a lullaby that her mother liked to sing to her a very long time ago.  What came through the wall didn't sound to her like words, just raw anger in the form of sound, and she awaited the inevitable crash of some breaking dish or other.  That specific sound didn't ever resonate through the house that night, though, and Tawney just guessed that they had run out of dishes to break.

"Don't you ever lay your hooves on me again!"  Tawney's mother cried out.  The argument was getting loud enough that, even through the humming and brushing, the quiet unicorn could still hear them.

"Maybe if you could do a single damn thing I asked I wouldn't have to!"  Tawney's father had always been a big, brute of a stallion, and nobody ever really could figure out why his wife ever stayed with him.  Perhaps she was afraid to leave, or perhaps she wanted to try and fix him, but nothing ever seemed to keep him from causing anything but pain to her or her child.

"Oh, now it's because you have to, huh?  That's fucking rich!"  

Tawney ground her teeth a little bit, tried to paste a smile on and kept brushing.  Her humming grew to the point that she might as well have been singing the tune a cappella.  She wanted the argument to stop, desperately begged for it, but her only escapes were sleep (which usually ended in a nightmare) or going out with her friend Maggie, with whom she usually stayed out late enough that she was punished anyway when she got home.  Maggie really was her only friend; the only one she could talk to and the only one who would actually listen.  Outside Tawney's door, however, the argument escalated.

"Listen to you!  You haven't shut your mouth since I got home!  What the hell else am I supposed to do?  Huh?  Just let you peck at me all day after I work from sunup to sundown just so that I can give you and your daughter a roof over your heads?"

"She's your daughter too, asshole."

"Don't you call me an asshole!"

"I'll call you whatever I damn well please!  D'you know how many times I've been asked where I got a black eye from?  Ever wonder how many times I've considered telling the truth?"

"Shut up."

"No, you shut up!  I'm so sick and tired of dealing with you!  I hate your baggage, I hate your personality, I hate the way you drink, I hate how you treat me and I especially hate how you treat my daughter!  I... Hate... You!"

"I said shut up!"

"And I said n--"  Tawney's mother was interrupted by a very audible slap across her face, followed by a long stretch of tense silence.  Eventually, after a few minutes had passed, noise flared up again, and Tawney couldn't bring herself to look away from the mirror.  The young unicorn heard doors slam, items get thrown around, and various other noises often associated with anger coming from her house, but she had become a master at ignoring them.  Eventually, however, she was met with something she couldn't ignore: her bedroom door being thrown open.

"Come on, sweetie.  We're leaving."  Tawney's mother's face appeared in the mirror within the open rectangle of light that was the door, though her father's imposing grimace stayed just at the threshold.

"Where are we going?"  Tawney asked in a panic, looking quickly over her shoulder with her mouth dropping open.

"Yeah, where are you going?"  The big lumbering stallion cast Tawney's own words out as a taunt to her mother, a tactic that he always used to get at both of them.

"None of your damn business!"  Tawney's mother, the cream colored pegasus that she was, turned back and snapped at the man, only giving him the satisfaction of having pushed her buttons even more.  "Pack as many changes of clothes as you can fit in a backpack-- and anything else you think you'll need for a little while.  We're going away."

Tawney actually got a good enough look at her mother as soon as she came into her room; the earth pony's nose was bleeding and she had the telltale signs of a new black eye forming.  Tawney wanted to help, but knew that it wasn't even worth bringing up.  Especially not with the perpetrator standing in the room.

"You can't leave!  This is your home!"  Tawney's father never took his eyes off of her mother, keeping the same, deranged glare that he always got whenever he was particularly angry.  Tawney knew from experience that he was capable of almost anything in this state, so she simply packed everything she could think of that she might need as quickly as she could.

"This isn't our home.  Home is supposed to be a safe place."  Tawney's mother let her voice drop to a menacingly motherly tone, the kind that only a bear or mountain lion whose cubs are threatened can make.  Tawney's big, blue pegasus father just stared half in awe and half in defiance, but he knew his place when it counted.  Tawney and her mother stepped out of the bedroom, but the young girl showed her weakness far more than her mother did.

"You'll never make it without me!"  Her father yelled down the hall after them.  Tawney's mother didn't even bother to dignify the stallion with a response, instead she put her wing around Tawney's withers to try and guide her quickly toward the front door.  "I make all the money!  Your mom can't even keep a damn job!  You'll be homeless and hungry and you'll come crawling back!"

The front door was thrown open, and Tawney and her mother nearly jumped out into the soft rain of the night.  Everything was absolutely dead outside save the occasional cart passing by.  Tawney hadn't even realized that she never put her hairbrush down that entire time, so she just stared down into it.  She hadn't cleaned the hair out of it in a while, even though it was easy due to her magical ability, so she absentmindedly started to pick the strands out from between the bristles.  Meanwhile, Tawney's mother tried to hail a passing cart, to poor results in the beginning.  

Lightning flashed, though thunder didn't follow until several seconds had passed, but Tawney caught the image of a pony standing just next to her in the night.  It was Maggie, black coat with a white streaked mane, dropped down over her face and soaking wet from the rain.  She was holding a small plastic bag, and Tawney could see that it was her favorite flavor of cherries.  Maggie must have been coming over to surprise her.

"Where are you going?"  The black pegasus asked, cocking her head to the side and letting her pretty green eyes flash in the dark.  

"I need to go away for a while, Maggie...  I'll be back, I promise."  Tawney ran up to her friend and hugged her tight, not wanting to let go because she knew that it would mean the end of their relationship.

"This is about your dad, isn't it..."  Maggie tilted her head down and let a very macabre look wash over her face.  She had come to know about Tawney's father issues over years of private confessions, so she easily picked up on what Tawney's mother was doing.  "You're not going to come back this time, I can see it in your eyes."

"Don't say that, Maggie!  I'd never leave you, you know that!"

"It's not your fault, Tawney, you're not the one that's leaving.  You're being taken away from me..."

"No, I swear!  We just need time to think is all!"  Tawney had told Maggie everything about her life.  About when her mother was abused, about when she was abused, and about how close she had come to killing herself more than once.  Maggie was her best friend in the whole world, an even saved her life just by being there for her.  

The black pegasus was the only one ever there for Tawney; she couldn't count on her parents, on her other friends (few and phony though they may have been), on her teachers, nor even on her friends' parents.  She hadn't ever met her friend's parents, but Maggie spoke so fondly of them every chance she got.  Tawney was stricken with envy over such a stable family life, and one with wealth on top of that.  Now, even the window that she got to watch through was being taken away from her.

"I'm going to miss you, Tawney.  Here...  Don't forget me, please."  Maggie handed Tawney the bag of cherries and started to walk away.  Tawney was just about to give chase when she heard her name shouted from behind her, so Tawney turned to look.  The unicorn's mother had managed to hail a covered wagon and desperately wanted to get out of the rain.  By the time the unicorn looked back for Maggie, she had disappeared.  

Tawney turned and solemnly walked to the taxi, getting in alongside her mother who promptly hugged her close.  Even with safety guaranteed, even with her only loving family brought together, Tawney couldn't help but feel a little dead inside.  

"Where you're going is gonna cost you three bits, please."  The cabbie said, briefly lifting his hood to get a look at his customers.  Tawney couldn't put her hoof on it, but the man looked familiar.  His big, green eyes and the hint of a white mane were the only things really visible from under the hood, however, and Tawney figured that a happy coincidence was just adding salt to a fresh wound.  

Tawney's mother paid the stallion, the three coins clinking into his velvet pouch one at a time, and they drove off into the rainy night, finding their home at a dingy little hotel on the edge of town.  Despite all of her mother's efforts, Tawney refused to cheer up for the rest of the trip, showing all of the angst of a teenager, coupled with several tortured feelings that were absolutely justified in being there.  She was sincerely depressed, and her mother knew it, but she wanted desperately to start a new life with her daughter.  They had already taken the first, and biggest leap of faith, and it was just her and Tawney against the world.  Unfortunately, Tawney had different plans.

Across the course of her life, Tawney had only one other pony to talk to, and that was Maggie.  Her mother hadn't ever been there for her, she'd only been motherly when it benefited her to do so or when instinct took strict control of the woman.  She wasn't cold, but she didn't know how to truly love, so Tawney always felt alone;  then more than ever.  Before the sun rose, Tawney had taken the disgusting hotel sheets that she was given to sleep in and tied them around her neck in a knot that she knew wouldn't slip.  Her mother had gotten a room on the third story of the building, so Tawney's dive out the window was instantly fatal, snapping the vertebrae the moment that the cloth tightened.  Tawney's mother woke up with the draft and din of an open window; just fast enough to watch her daughter commit suicide right before her eyes, but not fast enough to stop it.  Three vertebrae in her neck snapped, and within the confines of a dying mind, Tawney could hear the sickening crunch of each one.

One.

Two.

Three.