Same Love

by darf

Rating: teen
Tags: Sad, Applejack, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Braeburn
Length: 20193

Braeburn comes to terms with who he is. The ponies he cares about do the same, though some of them with more ease than others.

What it means to be the same, and what it means to be different. Who you love, and who you don't. What the difference is, and how much it matters.

Written for no one in particular, but with my mind on several people I care about very much.

Edited by a slew of folks, but by Noc and Jake the Army Guy in particular.

[Original written in February, 2013. The inspiring song of the same name was not nearly as prolific then as it is now... make of that what you will.]

Published 2013-09-28 18:40:02 UTC
Last updated 2013-09-28 18:40:02 UTC

Prologue

He sits at the piano designed for hooves—in a way, designed just for him. He finds unsteady certainty as his touch falls into place, sliding evenly between the sharps and the flats and fitting where it feels right. Certain keys jump out at him. Keys he doesn’t expect.

The notes aren't wrong—just different.

He presses down and the sound of a major chord rings through the pews of the church. Still unsure of himself, he ambles between the notes, playing them back and forth from top to bottom. His right hoof mimics his left, side to side, leading the harmony of notes in a run over the ladder of keys.

His hooves move, guided by the melody forming in his head. Sad. Bitter. A melancholic minor chord leading him away from his root and back towards a resolution.

The notes ring out between each other as he lets his hoof slip towards his tonic. Suddenly at home in a key that's never felt familiar.

The chords blur between their voicings. He doesn't know what he wants to play, so he plays only what he knows through the motion of his forelegs, the melody speaking to the chords speaking to the arrangement of a pattern he's never heard before.

As he plays, he hums quietly. There is the sound inside him, aching to be let out.

He's never heard it ask to be free. He never even knew it was there.

His humming quivers as the voice inside him shakes.

He can't see. He blinks, and tears spill onto the keys. His hooves tingle from the tiny drops of moisture as they splash across the piano.

He has to move. The sting of the minor chord hurts too much. And so he slides back.

He goes back and forth. Up and down. Back and forth. He could play those two chords forever, never leading anywhere.

The act of the sound makes him want to fall apart. With each muttered musical syllable that creeps from between his lips, a moan a thousand times louder lingers behind it, begging him to open up and fill the spacious halls behind him with the wail brewing in his chest.

But he can't. He quells it, letting the hum eke out only tiny sniffles. His tears fall with only accompaniment from the keys underhoof, the bundle of knots unraveling in his stomach.

There is a song, and he doesn't know where it springs from. It speaks to him through his body alone, bypassing his brain and coming straight from his heart. His lungs are harp-strings guiding the rhythm of his heartbeat, and that rhythm forms the metronome that sets the tempo for his playing, rocking him back and forth as he cries.

His hat tips over his eyes as he leans forward. But still he plays, because he knows where the notes go now. He knows, though he's never known before, what the music should sound like. There's no one there but him, alone in empty rows lit by the brightness of the sun and the speckled flickering of dust as it cascades toward the ground—the dust that's there always; tiny motes dancing in every direction, reminding him that, even in solitude, no one is alone.

The crescendo comes suddenly. A chord hammered with velocity so fierce that the piano strings cry out in protest. As his hooves slip onto their final chord, he slips forward with them, and almost falls onto the keys, letting his hooves settle where they landed first. He smashes down onto the piano until the volume threatens to deafen him with its proximity.

And then down. An octave, then two, until the lowest of the notes rumbles in his bones. It rattles the seats behind him, the walls, the tapestries drawn over windows. The dancing angels of dust shake in their descent.

His hoof taps, with a touch light enough to leave a feather undisturbed, the highest note he can find that sounds right.

Ting.

D sharp. It echoes so vividly that he can feel it in his soul, piercing through whatever composure is left and leaving a hole in the weakness of his heart.

He lets the note ring as he falls. His face finds the warmth of his own foreleg, and he rests both his limbs on the wooden frame of the sheet music holder above the keys.

He cries. Finally, so hard he shakes.

His hat covers his face, shielding him from the world. The tinkling tone of piano strings is drowned out by his sobbing, taking over suddenly and all at once, the tinny ring of that high key fading away into nothingness.

The sun in the window is bright. It cascades down on him as he sits there, lost in his tears and basking in the surrounding of the song that says more than his words ever could.

Chapter 2

“Cuz, I sure am glad to see ya’!”

Applejack’s voice split the air of the train-station. While the hustle and bustle of passing ponies caused enough of a background cacophony to make a conversation harder to hear than a bunny in a stampede of cattle, there was something about her voice that was slid through the noise.

“Well, shucks, AJ, I’m glad to be here.”

There was a voice that was out of the norm in Ponyville. The same down-to-earth intonation as Applejack, but brighter. Cheerful, upbeat, just a little less Southern. Not more ‘cultured’—just tempered.

“You sure you don’t mind puttin’ me up for a bit?” the voice asked, evading the noise of the station in the same way Applejack’s had.

“Don’t you worry about it, Braeburn. We’ve always got room for family, and this is a special occasion. When’s the last time you were out’a Appleloosa?”

The voice had a name.

It also had a picturesque appearance: the Western frontier colt still covered in a faint sheen of red Appleloosan dust sparkling on his cowpony vest and hat. He looked like he had wandered in straight out of the dire rocky cliffs in the middle of the desert.

Braeburn had a set of bags slung over his back, carrying what looked to be enough luggage and provisions to keep him in good health for weeks. Applejack looked longingly at one of the bags, her family hospitality urging her to yank the rucksack right off her cousin’s shoulders, but the counterpoint of her politeness held her back. Walking him from the train station would have to do.

“The last time I was out of Appleloosa... well, heck. I can’t even really remember.” Braeburn scratched his bare chin as he attempted to recall his earliest memory aside the hiss of steam trains delivering him to the sun-seared frontier of western Equestria. All he could remember at the moment were songs around a campfire, and work always waiting to be done.

“Well, it don’t matter none. Important thing is you’re here now, and you’re gonna have such a good time you won’t wanna go back when we’re done!” Applejack nudged her cousin in the side, chuckling.

Braeburn laughed uneasily at Applejack’s enthusiasm.

“Uh... right. Well, we’ll see. I’m just glad to see the family again. Y’all always said such nice things about Ponyville, I’m grateful for the chance to check it out myself!”

Applejack beamed.

“And you should be! This here’s the best little town on this side of Equestria, and you’re gonna love bein’ here every minute.”

Applejack cast her eyes around the market stalls as she and Braeburn walked from the station, through the far side of town and on ‘tward the center before coming out at the other end of the city square fountain, heading on their way to Sweet Apple Acres.

She didn’t have a lightning flash tour for her cousin the same way he’d had one for her, but she could make do with extolling the virtues of Ponyville nonetheless, even if she couldn’t drag Braeburn from shop to shop as though every corner of the town held a novelty to be gazed at in awe.

“Lots o’ stuff to do around town,” Applejack started, as though she was trying to convince herself. “You already heard about the farm, which I gotta say is lookin’ pretty swell this time o’ year. And, I gotta show you the sights around town. There’s the, uh...”

Applejack’s brain abandoned her tongue suddenly as it sought the nearest spectacle to emphasize.

Stores. Market stalls and stores. Houses and stores. Boring old stores, and boring old ponies in front of them.

She may have made a mistake.

“...rock,” Applejack finished lamely.

Braeburn cast a sideways glance as he tried to keep his eyes forward, dodging the unaware ponies ambling through the crowd as though they were on autopilot.

“A rock?” Braeburn asked. He raised an eyebrow. He’d heard Ponyville was a small town, though he’d never imagine a village-wide fascination with a rock.

Dang, Applejack thought.

“Yeah, uh... a rock. It’s a big one that Rarity brought from, the uh... labyrinth where we fought Discord.”

“Y’all fought Discord?” Braeburn went wide-eyed as he turned to face his cousin, stopping his well-paced gait in the process. “The ancient Spirit of Disharmony himself?”

Yes. Applejack mentally pumped her hoof in the air.

“Sure did. Me and all ma’ friends, who, if I recall, you met on our visit to Appleloosa.”

Braeburn scratched the back of his neck behind awkwardly.

“Well gee, cuz, I’m sure I did, but I, uh, don’t have the best memory for names, y’see.”

Applejack gave her cousin a light-hearted glare.

“Horseapples. You remember the name of every pony in that frontier town o’ yours, I’ll reckon.”

Braeburn balked and looked around as if scanning for some sort of defense against his cousin’s verbal counterpoint.

“Well... yes, I do, of course... but that’s different! I live there!”

“You’ve had a talent for rememberin’ ponies every since you were little, Braeburn. Goes along with that big mouth o’ yours.”

Braeburn blushed, but quelled his embarrassment by returning Applejack’s glare. She giggled at him.

“I’ll reintroduce you to everyone again. I’m sure they’ll all be dyin’ to meet ’cha.”

Braeburn tucked his body inward as he narrowly passed a middle-aged pony reading a newspaper and walking at the same time. When he felt it was safe, he nodded in Applejack’s direction.

There was a lot to avoid; even a small town like Ponvyille felt like the big city to Braeburn. Too much density. Too many ponies. He liked it when the town was only big enough to know everyone on a first name basis, and when a new arrival to town was an event instead of just another drop in an invisible bucket.

Braeburn noticed ponies giving him looks as he walked by. He wasn’t sure if it was just how out-of-place he must have looked, still dressed like a frontier settler instead of a well-kempt city—or town—pony. He noticed, however, that most of the looks were from girls; mares seemed to let their eyes linger on him longer than he felt was appropriate, and he was sure he noticed one or two blushing as he narrowly avoided their hooves by ducking towards his cousin.

Braeburn didn’t give them a second look. Walking in the crowded town was hard enough without his eyes occupied elsewhere—

“Oof!”

Braeburn let out a grunt as the wind was knocked out of sails. What felt like a brick wall had appeared in front of him suddenly, and the impact made him want to sit down and catch his breath for a good long while.

As he opened his eyes, reeling from the collision, a black-coated pegasus did the same, rubbing his hoof over his chest and then up to his silvery mane, which he slicked back only seconds after determining his chest and abdominal cavity were uninjured.

“Uh... sorry,” Braeburn managed, still smarting from the encounter. Applejack had stopped in time to prevent a three pony pile-up and contented herself with letting her cousin fend for himself in his apologetic introduction.

“‘s okay,” the pegasus said. Apparently uninterested in discussing the situation further, he pushed past Braeburn and faded into the crowd, standing out amongst the blur of pastel colours and flowing hair-dos with his spiked up mohawk and jet black fur. Braeburn watched him walk into the throng, staring at the silvery stand-up of hair until it vanished like a shark’s fin into the sea.

“Braeburn? You awake over there?”

Braeburn snapped his head around,  eyes wide as if he’d just been woken up.

“Huh?”

“I’ve said ‘Let’s get a move on’ a good three times now. You okay? Not gonna let a little bump get you down, are ya’?”

Braeburn shook his head, clearing the focus of his eyes and thoughts. “Sorry cuz,” he said. “Just a little more winded than I thought I’d be.”

“Ain’t no worry. We’ve got all day to get home... or a couple hours more until the sun sets, at least.”

Braeburn looked upwards. The sun looked down at him and smiled from its place, gliding down the other half of the sky.

It seemed much smaller here than it did in Appleloosa.

Chapter 4

“These pancakes are the best, Granny! Why don’t you make ‘em more often?”

Applebloom’s voice was unmistakable. She could have whined and yelled to make herself instantly identifiable in any crowd at town—instead, via the capricious whims of Celestia, fate, or both, she had been visited upon the most undeserving group of all: her family.

“Granny doesn’t make ‘em that often ‘cause they take too darn long,” Applejack answered, sighing at her sister’s questioning already. “I thought we went over this in that ‘talk’ we had a few days ago?”

Applebloom’s eyes fell to her pancake, a full-sized length of buttermilk sitting in a pat of butter, mired in an overwhelming lake of maple syrup.

“I don’t remember anything about pancakes,” Applebloom said.

“Well, you gotta think about it some more then,” Applejack chided, chewing a mouthful of pancake shortly thereafter.

Before taking another bite, Applejack pulled open the terribly grody lid of the table’s only syrup dispenser and squirted a ‘healthy’ amount (as opposed to the real healthy amount, which was none) onto the bite of delicious flour and magic waiting for her. She let out a little food-moan as the bit of pancake went down, and worried as she did so if it was loud enough for the rest of the table to hear.

But they were all occupied with something else.

“How do you like ‘em, cousin’ Braeburn?” Applebloom asked.

“Hooves down the best pancakes I’ve ever eaten. You pulled out all the stops, Granny Smith.”

Granny Smith’s eyes glazed over in the way they did when she couldn’t or wouldn’t pay attention to her surroundings, but her mouth curved into a smile.

“That’s nice dear,” she said, and took a tiny nibble of the small pancake she had chosen for herself. Such a tiny pancake that Applejack knew would take hours to disappear, as opposed to the two or three plates Big Macintosh had already put away. How he ate so much and never put on a pound was a mystery to her.

Applejack lowered her plate, letting the ambling trickles of syrup collect in the center and swirl around each other like the rings at the center of the tree they had come from.

“So, Braeburn, you ready for your first excitin’ day in Ponyville?”

Braeburn dabbed his his mouth with a napkin, his plate already clean.

“Sure am. You had somethin’ special in mind?”

Applejack opened her mouth—but before she could speak, she noticed Big Mac’s hoof raised above the table, held up like a colt waiting for teacher to let him ask his question. She turned towards him and gave a small nod.

“Not ta’ interject, AJ, but the east field still needs clearin’,” Big Mac said. “I got all of the south and west yesterday, so I was thinkin’ maybe you could help out—”

“Macintosh!” Applejack blustered as she pushed her plate forward, standing up from her chair. “We got a guest! Ain’t no way I’m gonna make our cousin slog through hours of applebuckin’ when he’s here on a special occasion.”

Big Mac shrugged.

“Fair enough. Just need ta’ get ‘em all picked before the week’s up.”

Applejack sighed.

“I ain’t sayin’ I don’t wanna help... you just picked a bad day to ask.”

Applebloom had already scurried off with her plate, and Granny Smith seemed more concerned with the tiny bit of her pancake left than anything else—but Braeburn was there, and fully aware of the awkward tension in the air. He didn’t want to be the source of any animosity between Applejack and her brother.

Besides which; Apples didn’t just leave work to be done. They did what needed to be done, no matter what.

Braeburn swallowed and tasted the traces of syrup lingering on his tongue. Big Mac and Applejack were still locked in a disenfranchised staring contest when he cleared his throat.

“I, uh... I don’t mind helpin’ out at all, AJ. It ain’t a big deal.”

Applejack looked aghast. Her jaw dropped slightly, and Braeburn noticed a bit of sugary maple still hanging onto the side of her cheek, missed by a napkin or ignored completely.

“You didn’t come up here to help with the farm, Braeburn. Macintosh can get the apples today and I’ll make it up to him later. We’ve got a whole day planned already!”

Braeburn stood up from the table and tapped the brim of his hat, coaxing it just a bit to the side, back into place on his mop of sandy-blonde hair.

“I hear ya, AJ, but it’s not really a bother. You did the same for me when you came to visit, and this isn't gettin’ caught up in buffalo pie-fights and wartime negotiations; it’s just some apples. Heck, I’m kinda curious to see how you do it. Been a while since I was back up, and I know y’all at Sweet Apple Acres always did the best applebuckin’ in the family.”

Applejack blushed and contorted her face shortly thereafter, trying to will away the red flush as it crept over her cheeks.

“Well... I mean, are ya’ sure you don’t mind? I could even do it by myself, if you wanna poke around town—”

“Wouldn’t hear of it,” Braeburn said, standing up properly from the table and pushing his plate forward. “Apples don’t leave each other hanging when something needs doin’. Let me help out and we’ll have the apples out of the way in no time. Then we can get on to whatever you had planned. Meetin’ those friends of yours again, I expect.”

Applejack nodded and smiled. “I got a whole i-tin-er-ary planned,” she said, enunciating each syllable.

“Lookin’ forward to it. Let’s get these dishes cleaned up so we can get on with it then.” Braeburn reached a hoof out towards his breakfast plate but found his progress impeded by Applejack’s foreleg, outstretched to block him from moving further.

“Oh no you don’t. Helpin’ with the farm is one thing, but I’ll be flashin’ brighter than a firebug if I let a guest take their own dishes.” Applejack turned her head toward the kitchen as she kept herself leaned over the table to keep the dishes away from her cousin.

“Applebloom! Get in here and take the rest of the plates away!”

Applebloom bounced through the kitchen doorway, hopping up and down on her way to the table.

“Ah’m reaw grad taw see you, cosmnm Braeburmn!” she said with a mouthful of plates, smiling at her cousin through her collection of dishes as she made her way back to the kitchen.

“I’m glad to see you too, Applebloom. We’ll spend some time together when your sister’s done runnin’ me ragged with whatever fancy schedule she’s got lined up.”

Applebloom spat the mouthful of plates and assorted glasses into the sink, the foamy water and dish soap she had put down already bubbling up over the countertop.

“I gotta show you my clubhouse! Me an’ Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo built it ourselves, and we got maps, and decorations, and furniture, and maybe you can give us some pointers on gettin’ our cutie marks, and tell us how you got yours, and then we can show you all the parts around town that Appplejack ain’t never gonna notice—”

Braeburn chuckled at his young cousin’s youthful enthusiasm.

“Sure thing, AB. Just don’t go too fast for me to keep up.”

Applebloom beamed as she took a cloth between her teeth and started scrubbing the first likely looking protrusion she could find in the pool of suds.

Big Mac took a minute to pull his chair away from the table. He sat for a moment, as though he needed a few seconds to contemplate what exactly to do with himself next. When he finally stood up, he walked towards the stairs, passing his cousin as he did so. He gave him a nod, which Braeburn returned, and then quietly made his way upstairs without saying anything further.

Applejack, meanwhile, had busied herself with the calendar in the corner, going over the schedule for applebucking and counting with her tongue between her teeth, adding up the dates and figures and amount of time left before their next big shipment.

Granny Smith snored in her chair, the miniature pancake on her plate half-gone and long forgotten as she dozed off.

Braeburn swallowed, but the lump in his throat remained.

Well... he had said ‘after breakfast’. There didn’t seem to be a better time. He walked up behind Applejack, unnoticed as her counting and tallies continued.

“Uh... AJ? You got a second?”

Applejack turned as though she was noticing Braeburn there for the first time. It took her a second to pull out of the avalanche of addition in her head, and she smiled, a glint of sunlight reflected through the nearby window catching the green of her eyes.

“O’ course, cuz. What’s on yer mind?”

Braeburn could already feel himself sweating. His legs felt hot, and he rubbed one of his forelegs against the other in an attempt to massage the heat away. That was no help; the act just made him more aware of how heavily he was perspiring. The imaginary block in his mouth seemed thick, like it was gluing his tongue down.

“I, uh... I wanted to...”

The words were too hard. He’d assumed that the second he started speaking that the words would just come, and it would be easy, and a relief, and he’d feel a tremendous weight lifted from his shoulders.

But it was different. He felt heavier now than ever, his tongue especially.

He couldn’t do it.

But he had to do it.

“I wanted to talk to you, about...”

Applejack leaned slightly to the side as Braeburn fumbled over his words. She tilted her head, her smile fading into concern.

“What is it, Braeburn? Is everything okay?”

Asking just made the words even harder. He wasn’t sure if things were okay. He couldn’t be sure until he asked.

But he couldn’t do it right now. He wasn’t ready.

“...yeah. I just, uh... wanted to talk to you about... today’s plans.” Braeburn settled on the first thing that sprang to mind. His eyes refused to stay still as he spoke, drifting around the dining room and chasing the beams of sun as they danced in through the glass panes of the windows.

Applejack tilted her head to the other side. She wasn’t the only pony in the family who folk could count on to be honest, and Braeburn’s words didn’t feel ‘real’ to her.

So what did he really want to talk about?

“You did? Just... about what’s on the agenda?”

Braeburn nodded quickly, still staring down and away from Applejack’s face, then noticing his aversion after a few seconds and looking upwards into his cousin’s eyes.

“Yeah. I, uh... I’m used to havin’ everything set up and organized back home. Doesn’t feel like a proper start to the day if, uh, I don’t know how things are gonna go ’till sundown.”

Applejack raised an eyebrow, but stayed her tongue. There didn’t seem to be a cause for worry. Just... something amiss.

She’d ask him about it later.

“Well... I was thinkin’ we gotta get those apples out of the way. With you helpin’—which again, I insist you ain’t gotta do—shouldn’t take more an’ a few hours... and then I figured we’d head into town and see what the gang’s up to. Reintroduce you proper. Then, maybe grab a bite to eat at one o’ the cafes Rarity’s always goin’ on about. From there, I figure we’ll have burned out most o’ the day, but if you had anything you wanted to add...”

Braeburn shook his head, jostling his hat slightly as he did so.

“Sounds good to me. I’ll get ready to go pronto. Just say the word when you’re ready to get to work, okay?”

Applejack nodded. “No problem. Just got a few more tallies to do to make sure we’re on track for this week.”

Braeburn nodded to his cousin and darted up the stairs to his guest bedroom, ending the conversation just like that.

He wasn’t sure if Applejack had felt it. He could certainly feel it—a tight, achy sensation in his chest.

He had wanted to tell her. But he wasn’t ready.

He could think about it for a while still. There was no hurry.

He needed to tell someone.  His journal was full of pages upon pages of his attempts to transcribe what he wanted to say. Reams of paper with "I'm..." and "Applejack..." beginning sentences and then falling apart into awkward sounding confessions, none of which managed to put into words why what he needed to say was so important. It was Applejack he wanted to tell. Not anyone else.

Who else could he tell? Appleloosa was his home, but he'd never settled there; he'd never felt at home the way he felt at home with his family. There were ponies he was close to, who he considered friends, but none that he cared about as much as his relatives. Applejack in particular had been there for him in the past. She'd been there when he was nervous, still unsure about his trip to the west of Equestria to make his way in an uncharted, unforgiving wasteland. She was there for him when he wrote for advice, even after his tide of letters stemmed as he became busy with obligation. She was just his cousin, but she felt like a sister, and he needed to tell her, more than anyone else. He needed her to know.

Maybe it would make him feel better. Maybe not better, but right.

As right as he could be, anyway.

Chapter 5

The sun wasn’t nearly as hot here as it was in Appleloosa.

Braeburn wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead as the mid-afternoon rays bathed the parts of him that weren’t shielded by his hat. It was hot enough, and constant applebucking didn’t make things any cooler. It was still nothing compared to the almost searing heat of the desert though; so strong you could see the air wiggle in front of you, and wave your hoof through the wind to bring it away like you’d run it under hot water.

Braeburn watched his cousin from time to time out of the corner of his eye. There was an admirable focus in the way she worked; a simple process, built up through practice and repetition to become second nature. While Braeburn had bucked his share of apples, he still had to give three or four kicks to knock everything off the sturdy branches of any particularly tough looking trees. Back home, the ecosystem for apple trees was less accommodating, so their boughs and payload as a result were easier to deal with; he could usually get them in just two kicks.

But here, Applejack lined up her buckets, turned swiftly with her forelegs as a pivot, and kicked once. A good, solid, hearty kick that knocked every single piece of fruit off their branches and into the containers waiting below.

Braeburn gave a low whistle the first time he saw Applejack’s work in progress, and she grinned at him underneath the brim of her Stetson.

The work wasn’t particularly arduous. The fact that Braeburn had done so much of it in the past let him zone out, thinking of other things as he worked. Particularly the words he was still mulling over in his head.

Every time there was a moment of silence, either himself or Applejack finding a new tree to empty, he thought about saying something, but the words wouldn’t come. He didn’t know how to begin. It was possible that once he said the first part, the rest would come flowing like a river from a broken dam, and the whole thing would be over with before he had time to second guess himself—but he couldn’t be sure of that, and his conscience wouldn’t let him take the chance.

They didn’t speak much. Applebucking, while subconscious, was still a concerted concentration of effort.

Applejack gave a particularly loud kick to the giant trunk of a likely looking tree, and its holdings plummeted downward, the red-skin of the fruit sparkling as it passed through the ever-present wash of sunlight.

“So,” Applejack said, breaking the relative silence of kicks and grunts for the first time since the pair had started their work. “Does she have a name?”

Braeburn almost choked. His tongue offered its services in lieu of anything substantial to gag on, but he suppressed it.

“Does who have a name?” Braeburn asked, a trickle of uncertainty creeping into his voice.

He wasn’t stupid, though. He knew what Applejack meant. The confusion was at his cousin asking him such a question in the first place.

Applejack grinned at him from beside her now-empty tree.

“Aw, c’mon, cuz. I ain’t slow.”

Braeburn furrowed his brow, his stare set on his cousin. She kept her grin on as she moved to her next tree, lining up the buckets underneath the low-hanging branches.

“I saw the looks you got from all those girls on our way home,” Applejack said. “Doesn’t take a genius to realize you’re a good lookin’ stallion, and runnin’ your own town besides. Girls like a stallion who’s in charge of his own life.”

Braeburn stared on as Applejack continued her runaway logic.

“I figured that was what you wanted to tell me this morning, but you got all gummed up when it came down to it, so I’m makin’ it easy on you. You can tell me if you got a special somepony waitin’ for you at home.”

Braeburn coughed. His apple-collecting buckets lay forgotten around his hooves.

“Applejack,” he started “there's no mare waitin’ for me back home.”

Applejack didn’t lose her grin as she dragged buckets to their next destination. “Well, shoot, you coulda fooled me. Still though... you musta thought about it. It’s around the time to start lookin’ for a nice girl and settlin’ down for a bit, don’t you think?”

“You don’t have somepony you’re fixin’ to settle down with,” Braeburn countered, lowering his voice.

“Well, I mean, I got a farm to run, and I ain’t never run into a boy that’s caught my fancy. Plus, they ain’t exactly throwin’ themselves at me. But you had half a townful o’ mares lookin’ at you like a prize pony on display on your way through! You could pick and choose somepony if you were lookin’ for a gal, no question.”

“I ain’t exactly interested in that, Applejack.” Braeburn dragged a bucket with him as he walked, his eyes shielded from the sun, as well as his cousin’s gaze, by the brim of his hat.

“Shoot, you don’t gotta tell me twice then. You’re a discernin’ stallion. You want a girl who’s up to snuff, I’m guessin’.”

“AJ...” Braeburn let the tiniest hint of frustration creep into his voice.

“Just promise you won’t steal away any of my friends,” Applejack said, kicking the last of her buckets across the grass, where it landed perfectly in its spot underneath the apple tree behind her. “I know Rarity says she ain’t the type to go for someone so... ‘rustic’, she’d prob’ly say... but I caught her givin’ you an eye or two when we was visitin’. She’ll probably try to smooth-talk you, so make sure you’re on your guard when you meet her again—”

“Applejack!”

Braeburn’s yell shook the branches of the apple-tree over his head, jostling the well-sized pieces of fruit hanging above, not quite as hard as a kick to send them tumbling from their branches.

Applejack looked up. Her smile broke for the first time since her questioning had started.

“Somethin’ the matter, cuz? Don’t tell me you’re getting your mane in a tussle over me teasin’ you about how all the girls want’ you—”

“I don’t wanna talk about this, AJ,” Braeburn interjected.

“Well... if you say so.” Applejack sounded genuinely perplexed. She looked up at Braeburn and found him staring at the ground, kicking his hoof against the grass.

“Are you... are you havin’ lady troubles, Braeburn? Is this a touchy subject? I’ll drop it if you—”

“No, I’m not… I ain’t havin’ lady troubles, AJ.”

Applejack finally stemmed her tongue, staring towards Braeburn, trying to read him.

In Braeburn’s head, the words were burning white hot across the anvil of his sudden agitation.

There was no better time than this, he reasoned.

Applejack tried to be the first to speak again. “Do you—”

“Listen, AJ,” Braeburn interrupted. “It’s not a ‘touchy subject’. I’m just... you’re just barkin’ up the wrong appletree.”

Applejack scratched her head through her hat, her mouth squashing into a confused tilt.

Braeburn could feel the pull of his tongue, yearning to let the words in his throat go. He sighed and tried in vain to swallow the lump clogging the way between his thoughts and the syllables that would let him voice them. It remained, so he settled for trying to clear it with willpower alone. His tongue felt like soggy, improperly chewed taffy.

Just say it.

“AJ,” he sighed, tilting his head down. The brim of his hat hid his eyes away from his cousin. “I’ve been meaning to tell you this since... well, since yesterday.”

Applejack forgot about her applebucking for a moment. She opened her eyes wide.

Braeburn sighed again and ran his tongue over his lips. They were dry.

“Applejack... I’m...”

Too blunt.

“...I like... stallions.”

There. He'd said it. All the waiting and thinking and anticipation and pushing the weight of his own worth into what his family—what Applejack—would think of him, was there, laid bare in front of him. Braeburn’s chest tightened as his lungs fought to drive the last of the air from his body. He tried to remember to breathe.

The seconds passed like years, too agonizing to count.

“Well,” Applejack started, ambling her tongue over the word, “...I think I get ‘ya.”

Braeburn didn’t want the force of his smile to break through his composure, but a hint of it crept out on his cheeks. He opened his mouth to speak, but Applejack interjected before he had a chance.

“I mean, no offense to Twi and the girls, but you’re definitely onta somethin’; sometimes stallions are just more fun to be around. Ain’t as high-maintenance, if ya’ know what I mean.”

Braeburn’s sunlight grin died as quickly as it had been born. He should have known things wouldn’t be that easy. But now he had started the ball rolling, and there was no part of him strong enough to stop it.

“No, AJ, that ain’t what I mean. I mean... I like stallions. Instead of mares, I mean.”

Applejack took less time to process Braeburn’s new statement. After a few seconds she nodded knowingly.

“I hear ya. You only had to be around Rarity fer’ one day; I get an earful of her every day, not to mention all the other mares in town. Always squawkin’ about somethin’, blabbity blah, this that and the other, y’know? Stallions is better company sometimes, no doubt about it.”

Braeburn felt a redness creeping onto his cheeks, fueled by disbelief instead of embarrassment. “No, AJ,” he started again, looking up from the grass and staring deadset at his cousin. “You're not understandin’ me. I mean I...”

Applejack held back a full-blown interruption, but couldn’t stay her tongue as Braeburn’s sentence ambled off into nothing after several seconds.

“Yes, cuz?” she asked, leaning forward curiously.

Braeburn swallowed a thick mouthful of awkward anguish. He had known this wouldn’t be easy, but he hadn’t expected it to be this hard. He had thought about it for what felt like years prior; in a way he'd been thinking about it his whole life. But now, here, with the whole of his being under the scrutiny of the only pony he'd ever felt truly close to, all that planning was pointless. There was the brick-wall of Applejack's misunderstanding, and there was Braeburn on the other side of it, throwing himself futilely forward in hopes of forcing his confession through.

“I mean I... like stallions. Like, like ‘em like ‘em. Uh... physically. And such.”

Applejack looked like sour apples. She bit her lower lip and scrunched up her face.

“You mean—”

“For... datin’. And... other stuff.”

If the summer had been more poetic it would have wafted an appropriately time breeze through the apple orchard. Instead, the only sound was the beating of Braeburn’s heart inside his own ears.

“I’m not sure I follow,” Applejack said.

“For gosh sake AJ, what’s so hard to follow? I like stallions—”

“I got that part,” Applejack said, waving her hoof effusively in the air, “but I’m not sure I get what you mean. Like... more than mares?”

“Instead of mares,” Braeburn qualified.

Applejack curled her mouth like she’d eaten sour zap-apple jam. “Well, that just don’t make no sense.”

Braeburn’s heart screamed at him in his chest. “What do you mean, it doesn’t make sense?” he asked.

“Well,” Applejack started, chewing on her sentence before letting it dribble out, “that just ain’t how things go. Stallions don’t go with stallions—they go with mares. Fact o’ life. I mean, that’s just how it is.”

“Half your friends are filly-foolers,” Braeburn said, holding the volume of his voice inside his chest. It wasn't a rebuttal he cared to consider. His tongue moved of its own accord, spurned on by the heat of frustration consuming his thoughts.

“Well that’s different,” Applejack rejoined, scraping one of her hind-hooves against the bark of the tree behind her. “There’s lots of mares in Equestria, way more than stallions, so it makes sense that some of ‘em would end up together. But there ain’t no wantin’ for girls for every boy. It doesn’t make sense that one stallion’d wanna be with another. Doesn’t add up. Simple mathematics.”

“So what I feel is wrong ‘cause of ‘mathematics’? Is that what you’re sayin’, cuz?” Braeburn hid his angry glare under the brim of his hat, but he couldn’t look away from Applejack, hoping behind his eyes that she might burst into flame and carry him away from the fast accumulating ball of regret that was this conversation.

“Well… I suppose you could say that. I’ve heard about a few stallions likin’ other fellas, but it don’t take much figurin’ to tell it ain’t right. You’re a smart pony… I’m sure you’ll come around. You sound like you’re just confused.”

“Confused.”

“Yeah. I mean...” Applejack let the silence between her words hang for a second. “Have you ever, y’know... tried it, with a mare?”

“I’m done,” Braeburn spat, turning away from his cousin’ towards the appletree awaiting his kick. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

It hurt. It hurt and he didn't want to think about it. If he kept his mind elsewhere, maybe the weight of how badly things had gone would stay off his shoulders. Of how the pony he most needed to tell who he really was had...

Applejack pondered for a moment. She lifted a heft of apple-buckets onto her shoulders after a minute, balancing the two of them on the wooden pole that held them in the same apparatus.

“Well, I ain’t,” she said, readying herself for the haul of the buckets towards their holding place. “I’m glad you brought it up.”

Despite himself, Braeburn allowed a glimmer of hope in his eyes as he lifted his head, his irises sparkling with the tears he was holding back.

“Wouldn’t be right if us Apples didn’t share our problems,” Applejack continued.

That was it. Braeburn finally let his mouth distend, unable to contain the shock that burst through his body.

“Problem?” he asked, his voice finally tinged with the fiery disbelief that he’d kept hidden in the interest of civility.

A problem. What he wanted was a ‘problem’. He was a problem. Not just him, but the way he felt. Who he was. The pony he had been his whole life, built up by years of being himself, and he was a problem. He was someone Applejack didn't understand. He was someone who was wrong. And Applejack told him all of this, through her words and lack thereof. She told him that no matter how hard he had thought and felt and dreamed of telling the pony he hoped most dearly would understand him, none of it mattered, because he was just a 'problem' to be aired out.

Applejack caught Braeburn's tone. She opened her mouth to speak, but Braeburn was quicker in his anger.

“I’m a problem?” he asked, throwing the empty buckets on his shoulders to the ground and letting them clatter onto the summer grass.

“I didn’t say that,” Applejack said. “I’m just sayin’ you’ve gotten a little confused, and you probably need some help figurin’ out what’s right, sortin’ yourself out—”

Applejack heard the tumbling of apples from wooden containers before she could raise her head. When she did, the sight of spilled fruit greeted her, as well as the noticeable absence of the pony that had stood beside the same buckets seconds before.

She looked from side to side as though her cousin might reappear in either direction, executing the performance of an unannounced magic trick. She found him after a moment, the flicker of his sandy-blonde hair and brown vest caught in the top of her eye, speeding quickly toward the horizon.

“Wait... Braeburn!”

She called out, but his tail had already swished into nothing, leading him away into the setting sun.

Chapter 6

Town square was a full pond on the best of days, but today it was a feeding frenzy, filled with frantic ponies searching for the best bargain for their bit or the best bite within their budget. Applejack avoided the place unless it was apple-selling day, which was every other day, if she could help it; anything to stay out of a crowd of tunnel-visioned in-too-much-of-a-hurry ponies was a good idea.

Applejack tried to drift through the crowd like an unassuming fish, but the mass of bodies jostled her like a rock in the current, slamming her this way and that despite her best attempts to remain stable. She scanned the bodies and heads as they drifted past her, hunting for a sprig of desert-tinged mane or a brown hat to match her own. Hairstyles of all sorts jumped out at her, and outfits besides, but none of them were what she was looking for; none of them were Braeburn.

She had searched his room and found nothing. All the while upstairs and back down she had pondered what she’d said, or how she’d said it.

She had fumbled over her words, that was true. Applejack had never been the best speaker, public or otherwise, unless the matter came particularly strongly from her heart. Family was always held close to the core of meaning in her chest, but something like this was out the realm of her usual understanding.

What had he wanted her to say?

It wasn’t normal, really. Applejack knew of course that the idea of ‘normal’ was a bit odd in Equestria, what with the logistics of different races and species and the mismatch of gender that seemed like a cruel joke perpetuated by the state matriarchy. But she knew what made sense, and her cousin liking stallions... well, that didn’t.

Rarity had said such nice things about him too.

Applejack reminded herself to keep her eyes open. She had decided on the train station despite the suitcase of Braeburn’s things still open on his bed upstairs, figuring given the turn their conversation had taken that Braeburn might choose rebuilding his bathroom cabinet’s contents over stopping to talk. She might have been right, but she couldn’t see anypony that looked even remotely like Braeburn, and every second she stopped to look she was slammed into by another pony walking by not watching where they were—

“Oof!”

Applejack let out the air in her lungs involuntarily, resenting it as it left her chest, forced out by the impact of a hoof, heavy and hard into her stomach. She almost fell, but managed to keep her balance despite her body’s protest for more air. She closed her eyes for a second, opening them only when she was sure she could breathe well enough to scold whomever had run into her. The other body beat her to the punch.

“Why don’t you watch where you're going, you big dumb—Applejack?”

Applejack recognized that voice.

“Rainbow Dash?”

The sound of spunky enthusiasm and gravelly tomboyishness was hard to misplace. Sure enough, Rainbow Dash grinned back at her, rubbing a hoof on the back of her neck in an embarrassed gesture that translated universally to ‘oops’.

“Sorry about that AJ. I’m kinda in a hurry. Wasn’t really looking—”

“—where you were going? I noticed. No fuss, you just knocked the wind outta me.”

Dash laughed lightly, trying not to sound too enthusiastic about her impromptu stomach tackle.

“Yeah, my bad. You seem like you’re in a hurry too though. Off to somewhere important?”

Applejack considered her options. On one hoof, she wasn’t sure she wanted to make her cousin’s disappearance common knowledge. Awkward situations only lead to questioning, and family business was family business, not meant for every pony passing by to stick their nose in.

On the other hoof, Rainbow Dash was her friend—and besides that, she could fly, high and fast and with a pretty good eye on her surroundings. If Applejack keyed her in on the situation, omitting the awkward conversation, she might be able to get some much needed help tracking Braeburn down before he left town, or just disappeared entirely.

“I’m looking for somepony,” she settled on, trying not to give away details before they were necessary.

“Oh really? Who ya’ lookin’ for?”

Applejack bit her tongue before her honest inklings and subtle guilt made her give in.

“Braeburn. My cousin, from Appleloosa. He’s visiting for a week, and I... he, uh... well, he disappeared, and I can’t track him down.”

“Disappeared?” Rainbow Dash relaxed her stance. Though she had entered into minor small-talk, she had stayed crouched as though after exchanging pleasantries she may as well jump into the sky and fly off into the distance. Now she looked more settled, perhaps indicating that she’d be willing to stay still for a few minutes to hear what her friend had to say.

The crowd washed around the two solitary ponies like a rapid, with occasional bumps to both suddenly emergent obstacles.

They both noticed it—Applejack when a pony with a vegetable cart almost took off her tail, and Rainbow Dash as three ponies slammed into her side in sequence.

“Do you wanna move or something? Kinda hard to stand here and talk at the same time.”

Applejack nodded and scanned around the town square for somewhere that might be suitable for a conversation about awkward confessions and poor word choice.

The alley two stores from town hall caught her eye.

He had seen the church in the distance.

Even from far away it had caught his eye; a monument to a faded way of life that seemed somehow perfectly in place despite its anachronistic nature. The top of its steeple-tip and unnecessary lightning rod had shone at him in the sunlight like a beacon of forgetful interest, asking his attention and dismissing it just as quickly.

The doors had creaked when he pushed through them—not ominously, like a dilapidated house, but with as much well-meaning as they could muster, warm and hospitable like a grandparent welcoming their son or daughter’s bundle of joy into their house for the first time. Cookies were on the metaphorical table.

Braeburn almost resented the welcome. He was in no mood for friendly ‘hello’s.

He scanned the room past the entrance doors, looking for something to hate. His eyes had been thick with tears the moment he took off, blinding him like acid sweat earned in a runner’s race, which would have been more than perfect if they had stopped when his hooves had stilled. He’d run faster than he remembered ever running in his life, racing to get away from the epicenter of his anguish, but the sick, heavy feeling in his chest and stomach had come with him. As he entered the church, his emotions began pounding on his insides, threatening to bring up the contents of his stomach through his unwilling mouth.

In the church, he clenched his mouth shut and looked around.

Ponies had found no use for churches in years—more years than Braeburn could recall. He remembered the churches of his youth, meeting places on odd-days of the week, the site of family functions and the first chords he’d learned on his guitar—but worship had never entered the equation. There was only one deity, and that was Celestia, and she requested no reverence. Luna’s readdition to the Equestrian pantheon would have complicated things if any amount of structure had entered the equation, but ponies in Equestria had no use for format to their respect for their Princess; their Queen; their God.

There had been a time when improper justifications and wrongfully inspired enthusiasm had given weight to calculation in practice. Words like ‘Celestial Tenets’ and ‘Praise Her Solar Majesty’ had crept at one time into Equestrian vocabulary, and Celestia had been too perplexed and forgiving to bar them from worming into common usage. Only when she learned of the dictation attached to her name did she seek to prevent the association, and by then she had missed the mark, leaving her years to undo the damage of a stilled tongue, while ponies claiming to be her voice had wagged theirs all too readily.

He hadn’t thought about church since he had left for Appleloosa.

The church booths were worn. The backs of their once perfectly maintained seats were scuffed, gouges in the wood left by frolicking children irreverent for the damage they were causing to supposedly ‘holy’ upholstery. The catches on the backs of the pews that once held the commonplace edition of Celestial Tenets were empty, filled only now with dust and the laughs of congregations they had kept for themselves.

Braeburn ran his hoof over the grooved furniture, searching for some piece of it that might tell him why he had come. Why, bathed in the glow of the sun through stained glass windows and suffocating dust, he felt he was in the right place.

He had made one stop before he arrived, taking two things with him that he was surprised he had left in one place at all: the rope that he never went anywhere without, and a notebook coupled with its pen, hanging from the hinge of the book’s binding tied with a bright red string.

He came to the piano at the church’s far end and set the book down carefully, and the rope beside it, resting both of them on the bench in front of the ancient organ.

The rope slid from its place, falling off the stool and onto the floor. Braeburn let it fall.

He flipped open the book to the middle, finding an empty page unmarred by his scrawlings and the prepared speeches he had discarded minutes after writing. The pen dangling from the book’s top seemed to taunt him with its accessibility. He saw his cousin's name at the beginning of an unfinished sentence and, invisible, the hope in his heart that he'd let blot onto the paper as he'd written it.

All the sentences arranged there had come out on the train ride over. The colour of the pen matched the book’s binding, which made it feel like the whole way to Ponyville, he’d been pouring his heart out with every word.

No combination of sentences could put together what he felt he needed to say. It was so simple, at the outset. Just tell her. Tell her and that would be it.

Why did he need to tell her in the first place?

That was a complicated question. Why did he need to tell her, and no one else? Why couldn’t he tell ponies in what he felt like now was his hometown—his neighbours, his friends, acquaintances or closer than that, ponies that felt like they knew him and loved him and wanted him to be happy. Why, when he considered the words on his lips that he swallowed before speaking to them, did the thought feel so empty in imagining it to them?

It was because, in the long run, that they didn’t matter as much.

Not to say that they didn’t matter. Reducing anypony he cared about in that town would throw away his whole reason for being there—his whole reason for making the place his life, breathing it every day.

And still, there were things that mattered more.

He’d thought of the worst on the way to Ponyville. If she told him... There was no way. When family mattered more than anything else, there was a reason they mattered. So even though he’d given the idea more imagining that it deserved, he’d buried it in the back of his head, to rest with the perpetual doubt and insecurity that came from having to say that kind of thing in the first place. It could never happen, he’d assured himself.

The whole book was made for burning now. The bits of his heart he’d written down. He didn’t want to see a single word.

But he needed to write at least one thing more.

With salt on his lips from the tears that refused to stem their flow, Braeburn picked up the pen in his mouth and uncapped the tip with a wiggle of his tongue. The blank white page leered at him, as though daring him to make a mark.

For a pony who usually had so much to say, his mouth felt suddenly and permanently incapable of movement.

He managed a single sentence, scrawled in hasty script, before he let the pen fall back to its place. His interest turned elsewhere; he considered the rope at his feet and lifted it upward with his foreleg, raising the woven material underneath his nose and wishing he could smell it through the collecting impedance of his seemingly endless tears. Holding it to his mouth, he looked up, and stared toward the roof of the church through the water he couldn’t manage to clear.

A likely looking beam jumped out at him. It seemed low enough.

The book and pen fell to the floor, conjoined together, as Braeburn shuffled them sideways to make room for himself on the piano bench.

Chapter 7

“So why did Braeburn ‘disappear’?” Rainbow Dash asked, fluttering her wings as she settled against the alley wall, kicking tiny bits of discarded trash up into the air like dejected dragonflies.

“Well, I mean, he didn’t disappear, really. I just... lost track of him.”

“Right. What you might call ‘disappearing’.”

Applejack glared. While she was grateful for the chance to get the sudden onset anguish of her poorly handled conversation off her chest, she had to consider the difference between giving Rainbow Dash a backstory and simply telling her to jump up and scan the crowd.

She settled on the former. Dash was her friend, after all.

“Right,” Applejack said and sighed. “So, he disappeared because, we, uh... well, we had a bit of an argument.”

“What about?” Rainbow Dash asked, nonchalantly leaning against the wall with her foreleg. Even in the most supposedly intimate situations she managed to keep an air of aloofness to her every move. It would have made Applejack grumble in any other circumstance.

“It’s... complicated.”

“Oh?”

Applejack sighed.

“He, uh... well, he told me somethin’, and I’m thinkin’ he didn’t like the way I reacted too much. We both said some stuff and he, uh, took off runnin’ before the conversation was over.”

Dash picked herself up off the wall.

“Alright, so spill the beans. What were you guys talkin’ about?”

Applejack’s tongue felt heavy.

It had been a struggle for Braeburn to tell her, no doubt. So who was she to tell somepony else?

This case would have to be an exception.

“He told me he... well. He said he likes... stallions.”

Rainbow Dash took a few seconds to consider Applejack’s answer. She blinked once or twice, waiting for more, eventually concluding by virtue of silence that Applejack saw her response as complete.

“And?” Rainbow Dash finally asked, leaning forward with even more insistence.

“Whatta you mean ‘and’? He told me, and I... told him what I thought about it, and I guess that set him off.”

Rainbow Dash backed off a bit. Her expression changed subtly enough that a passerby wouldn’t have picked up on it, from generally vague interest to a sudden, cautioning stare.

“And what did you tell him you thought about it?”

“Well, you know... I told him that... well... that ain’t normal.”

Applejack barely managed to finish her sentence before a hoof took her breath away, this time in the form of a jab on her chest, pushing her back, a foot that she stumbled over until her hind legs met the dumpster at the mouth of the alleyway. She coughed for a few seconds before opening her eyes to an irate looking Rainbow Dash closer to her face than she was comfortable with.

“Whadda you mean it ‘ain’t normal’?” Dash’s voice was as brash as AJ had ever heard it, the same antagonistic, confrontational tone she had used with the Appleloosan ponies in their buffalo negotiations. Applejack recognized it, and it made her sweat a little.

“You know!” Applejack said, wishing to avoid another jab in the chest. “Proper couples should be a mare and a stallion—”

“‘Proper couples’ is a load of horseapples,” Dash interrupted, placing her hoof dangerously close to Applejack’s chest. “What on earth has gotten into your head that makes you think there’s some definition of two ponies who love each other that’s considered ‘improper’?”

 AJ felt her lungs gather in an extra large gulp of air in nervous anticipation.

“Well... okay, maybe ‘proper’ isn’t the right word. But c’mon, RD. You know it ain’t normal for—”

“What’s normal?” There it was, the poke. Applejack had prepared herself, and leaned back against the dumpster in an effort to deflect the brunt of Dash’s force. It worked, and Applejack’s lungs rewarded her with a mild groan instead of full-out shouting.

“You know... normal! Like a mare and a stallion, or—”

“Or a mare and a mare?” Dash interjected, seemingly focused on not letting Applejack finish a single sentence.

“You know what I mean,” Applejack countered, huffing herself up against her friend’s sudden aggressive disposition. “Mare and a mare’s different ’cause—”

“Stop right there AJ. Don’t get into the second part. Why don’t you tell me what’s ‘normal’?”

Applejack’s skin felt hot suddenly, hotter than it ever had under the ever-beating sun that had bathed her during her applebucking. Rainbow Dash’s stare bored into her skin like a beam of light focused through the lens of a magnifying glass, and she could almost hear the invisible sizzle as her conversational composure began to smoke.

“Normal,” she started, “like if—”

Rainbow Dash didn’t let her get more than a few words out before another jab. Applejack hadn’t been expecting it, which meant the rest of her sentence was consumed by sudden coughing, accompanied by a glare from Dash.

“Normal’s a mare and a stallion, huh? So let’s talk about ‘normal’. In your group of ‘normal’ friends, you’ve got a mare who likes books more than stallions or mares. You’ve got a pony who I don’t think you could pay enough to think about what sex somepony happens to be, on account of how much she likes all of them. You’ve got a pony who’s more scared of dating than she is of her own shadow, but if she wasn’t, would probably sooner spend her evenings with a bear or a flock of bunnies than another pony; a pony who spent ages obsessing over some stupid prince, so set on getting a stallion you were sure they were straight until their plans fell apart and weeks later stuff got kind of weird and you wanted to believe them, but there’s no way a straight pony is that good of a kisser...”

Applejack blinked through the last remnants of her coughing fit. She wasn’t sure she’d heard properly.

“...you, who’s never had a date in her life and probably hasn’t spoken to a stallion in ages other than her brother, and me. And I like mares.” Rainbow Dash finished, managing not to gasp for oxygen despite her breathless delivery.

The air between the earth pony and pegasus simmered, feeling hotter than the sun that beamed down above them.

“So why don’t you tell me what’s normal, AJ?”

Applejack steeled against the warm metal of the dumpster behind her, leaning as far away from Dash’s accusing hoof as she could manage. Rainbow Dash’s eyes were narrowed in a way she recognized only from confrontations that had shaken the foundation of events around them; narrowed in pre-negotiation talks with buffalo; narrowed behind raised fists in Discord’s direction; and narrowed at her now, trying to explain why her cousin was ‘abnormal’.

Applejack swallowed. Her throat felt dry.

“Alright, okay, I get it.”

Dash relaxed her stare but withdrew her hoof only a bit. Applejack allowed herself a deeper breath without the point of an accusing limb on her chest. The scent of heated garbage began to waft into her nose, and she stepped away from the dumpster, wrinkling her nose and pushing past Rainbow Dash. Dash let AJ gather her thoughts for a minute, huffing the taste of decaying food out of her nostrils and trying to fill them with air from elsewhere that might carry some kind of extra clarity.

Applejack tried to speak again.

“But—”

Rainbow Dash turned in a flash, readying her accusing stare before Applejack could begin her contradiction. The rapid pivot made Applejack balk, but she stayed rooted on all four legs, trying her best to allay the intimidation she had let sink into her heart with Rainbow’s hoof on her chest.

“But,” she continued, “just ’cause it ain’t... well, I mean, normal or not normal, it doesn’t... it doesn’t make sense.”

Applejack circled back and forth in the alley in tiny ten-step long grooves, and Rainbow Dash withdrew the ferocity of her glare as she watched her friend pace.

“I mean, what’s wrong with mares? I ain’t the type to fancy all that girly prissy stuff that Rarity likes, but I know girls ain’t hard to look at, and they’re nice enough to be around at the worst of times. So why don’t Braeburn like ‘em? Don’t make no sense for him to wanna chase some big dumb stallion when he’s probably got filly heartaches followin’ him like a trail of appleseeds behind a planter...”

Rainbow Dash let Applejack’s sentence trail off before she stepped forward, standing in the path of Applejack’s pacing in preparation for an inevitable collision course. Just as she had done before, Applejack bumped into blue feathers with her mind elsewhere. This time she was saved the loss of breath, but she still looked put-out underneath the brim of her hat as she looked up.

“Let me try to explain it another way,” Rainbow Dash said. “What’s the one thing you love more than anything in the world?”

Applejack thought for a few seconds, her eyes drifting sideways into the corners of her mind. She opened her mouth to speak but found Rainbow’s hoof on her lips before she could utter her first syllable.

“—and don’t say apples,” Dash cautioned before lowering her hoof. Applejack glared at her, but parted her lips for a second time after a moment.

“Well... shucks, I dunno. I guess it’s my family.”

“Okay,” Dash said. She circled around, leading Applejacks head in an arc until her eyes reached the wall, and Rainbow Dash leaned against the worn brick with her traditional nonchalance. “So, what if you woke up one day and somepony said you couldn’t love your family? Not even that it wasn’t ‘right’, or ‘normal’.” Dash arched the tips of her wings with each accented word, making scare quotes with her extended feathers. “Just, you got up, got ready for your day, and somepony said, ‘You don’t love your family anymore. You love... fashion.’”

Applejack scrunched up her face as she tried to reconcile the impossible hypothetical.

“That don’t make no sense. Why would somepony—”

“That’s not important. Listen; what’s important is thinking about it. Ignore the ‘why’ for a second. How would it make you feel?”

In the deep furrows of her mind, Applejack fought the absurdity of the proposal with her best attempts at empathy.

How would she feel?

The concept was inscrutable to her. It was like telling a fish to ride a bicycle to work: utterly alien to every fiber of her being.

“I couldn’t do it,” she said plainly.

Rainbow Dash nodded.

“Mhm-hmm. And why is that?”

“Because...” Applejack paused, looking to the ground as though the scuffed dirt and erstwhile scraps of trash might key her in to the secrets of expressing the thoughts in her heart instead of her head.

“Because... because that ain’t who I am. I don’t love fashion. I love my family. They’re the most important thing in the world to me.”

Dash nodded again.

“Because your family, and loving them, is part of who you are.”

“Exactly.” Applejack grinned.

“Right. So,” Dash started, picking herself up from the alley wall, “think about how it would make you feel just to have somepony tell you that. What you’d think if they suggested for a second giving up that bit of who you are, saying your new purpose in life was fashion, or research papers, or... pears.”

“... pears?” AJ’s eyes glossed over, losing the thread of the metaphor in a cloud of particulars.

Rainbow Dash put her hoof on Applejack’s shoulder and shook her head with a sigh.

“Not the point. How would that make you feel? And not just anypony telling you that; your family. Somepony you care about more than anything, telling you that you were wrong?”

“Well...”

Applejack thought.

How would it make her feel?

The very notion of somepony trying to convince her the core of her being was something she could discard at their direction was laughable. She’d do just that—she’d laugh in their face and tell them to take a hike before she took them off her acre herself. If they told her to start farming pears the next day instead of apples, she’d tell them right where they could put their pears.

Applejack was an Apple, and for Apples, family always came first. Loving her family was part of who she... was.

Applejack’s mouth formed the ‘oh’ without pushing the air past her lips.

Dash let her hoof sink into AJ’s shoulder.

“Are you starting to get it?”

“But that’s different!” Applejack said, practically shouting, and jumped back from Rainbow Dash’s hoof like it was a hot poker that had been left in a fire. Her face turned into a mask of panic as her brain attempted to reject the inkling of comprehension that had crept through its iron gates.

“And why is it different?” Dash asked.

“‘Cause... ‘cause it just is! Family and... who I wanna date ain’t the same thing, dang it!”

“So you’d be okay with being told you’re supposed to like mares now?”

Applejack sputtered on an unspoken sentence for a moment, her tongue suddenly unable to form the words of her protest.

“No, I... but I don’t... that... that has nothin’ to do with...”

Dash’s hoof pressed on her shoulder again.

“I know you get it, AJ. I don’t know why you’re so convinced you don’t. It’s all the same.” Dash lowered her voice, her words soft but still audible over the background noise of the nearby city square. “Family, mares, stallions... apples. It’s all the same love when you break it down.”

Applejack looked around. Open ends on either side of the alley greeted her, the potential avenues of escape from a conversation that made her feel as though she was trapped inside her own head, the walls of her argumentative thoughts closing in on her closer with every second.

How would she feel if she was told what she cared about was ‘wrong’?

If her purpose and lifelong pursuit were incorrect?

If what she felt, or who she felt it for wasn’t ‘normal’?

If the thing she loved the most wasn’t right?

Applejack sank a little into the ground, her body suddenly deflating as the balloon of her obstinance punctured and gave out its last gasp of protest.

“I...”

The single word faltered into open air. In the distance, the two ponies could hear the sound of the crowd milling about, all of them with their own purpose and pursuit. All of them who they were, and right as no one else.

Applejack opened her mouth several times and let her tongue flop around like a wet fish, searching for what she wanted to say.

She settled on her words with clunky hesitation.

“What... what do I say to him?”

Dash rubbed Applejack’s back with an almost motherly tenderness, coaxing away worry as best she could with the light pressure of her hoof.

“Well,” she began, “he’s your family, isn’t he?”

Applejack nodded.

“Then that’s what you tell him.  You tell him he’s your family, and you love him no matter what, and that you’re sorry.”

Applejack raised her face finally, pulling her eyes away from the unfeeling dirt that had refused to aid her, devoid of answers. Tiny trickles of tears had made their way down her cheeks already, and errant drips began to drop to the soil, sparkling in the sunlight before they hit the ground.

“And then what do I say?” she asked, her voice thick with emotion, and the feeling, suddenly, of knowing what she had done wrong.

“You don’t say anything,” Rainbow Dash said, rubbing along the base of Applejack’s neck one last time before lifting her hoof.

“You listen.”

Chapter 8

The rope felt familiar in his hooves. He had studied it for a few minutes, considering every twist of the woven material as he passed his touch over it. It was sturdy, like a structure he could count on.

The bench felt cold under his hooves, unwarmed on the end he had selected. Standing at his tallest on the bench had made the legs wobble, but they held after a few uneasy seconds.

There was room enough on the sheet-music holder for his notebook. He had considered its place for what he felt was an embarrassing length of time, wanting to simply plunk it down and leave it where it fell, but feeling a tug in his chest to assert the location of what he had written. Not to put it on display, but to make it clear enough to see with minimal effort. He noted, lamentably, that his cursive was terrible, and he regretted not having the time to polish it.

He held the rope place as he lifted his head up, and it slid perfectly above his shoulders like a hug from an old friend. It chafed against his chin when he tightened it, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

It was still hard to see through the tears, but he didn’t suppose that mattered either.

The sun had finally decided to set when Applejack parted the grass of the field around her forelegs. She had followed leads of her suspicion until the darkness threatened to rob her search of its only element of detection. She could recognize Braeburn’s head of scruffy yet well-kept hair anywhere, but only if she could see it. So, with the constraints of her only means of conclusion readily apparent, Applejack had settled on her final destination before she was to give up.

‘What about the old church?’ Dash had said.

After Applejack had cried out the tears threatening to sink her heart, Rainbow Dash had agreed to a scan of the crowd without a second thought. She had leapt up like a lightning flash and parted the clouds with the speed of her acceleration, and scanned in every direction for the cowpoke hat and sandy-blonde mane Applejack had given her as reminders.

For Dash, an hour long search took seconds. But she had taken minutes.

Applejack’s face had fallen when the pegasus descended, shrugging with an empathetic expression.

They had searched together, stopping passerby and asking in the least invasive way if any of them had seen a country pony looking somewhat out of place. They had checked in shops, around corners, and under objects. Nopony had greeted them but sympathetic citizens, and the occasional old coot in too much of a hurry to be helpful.

So, on a whim, with no further leads and Dash retreating home to beat the onset of evening, Applejack had made her way to the church.

How would that make you feel?

Applejack remembered the church from when she was just a filly. She had loved the Sunday mornings spent there, even if her parents had assured her that there was no compulsion in their weekly visits. Applejack ignored them with all her heart, knowing full well that if she had been anywhere besides inside the white painted walls of her favorite worship come the weekend, something must be amiss. The lacquered walls of the now-decaying old building greeted her with a familiar reception, welcoming her inside with the utterances she remembered in the back of her head. Recitations from scripture. Rhymes she had shared with other fillies. Ruminating, even in her youthful ignorance, on the weight of the words given to her from the mouth of the proselytizing pegasus who hosted every sermon.

Applejack paused with her hoof on the cracked paint of the church doors. The finish peeled underneath her touch, and she stripped away several inches of the paint, revealing the wormy looking wood underneath, before pushing the door open properly.

The creak of the aged hinges was washed over by a louder sound. The clatter of something wooden as it skittered across the floor.

Applejack started at the noise and scanned the ground in front of her hooves in search of what errant piece of furniture she might have stumbled upon or knocked to the ground. The sudden volume was disarming, and she looked over the same patch of once-familiar church floor for several seconds before the concretes of her perception kicked in. The sound couldn’t have been her, or the door—it had come from much too far away.

The other end of the church, to be precise.

Applejack lifted her head. She held the flicker of an apologetic smile in the back of her mind as she looked up, dreaming to herself that she might open her eyes to find Braeburn standing there, waiting for her to speak.

She found Braeburn there. He was not standing.

Time spooled into slow-motion as it passed through Applejack’s senses.

The end of the church felt very far away.

Applejack remembered running through the seats as a child, animated and unconcerned until the hum of the crowd died down and the the first murmur of the self-appointed reverend’s lips ambled down the middle of the church. She remembered darting through them with pursuers on her tail, evading them at every turn and taking fantastical angles of maneuverability between one piece of wood and the next. When she was young, the seconds between seats had disappeared as she blinked them away.

Applejack lifted her hoof, and it felt slow, like sick, twig-filled molasses.

Braeburn, she thought, wishing his name to her lips.

Her mouth remained still. Her second hoof began to complete the first’s arc, raising itself and slogging through the air with an agonizing, paralyzing slowness.

If Braeburn had noticed the creak of the door, his recognition was unapparent. His only reaction to Applejack’s presence was the twitch of his limbs, jerked about by the agonizing onset of asphyxiation’s cruel fingers.

His lack of expertise had spared him a well architected hangman’s knot, and therefore left his neck intact. The slow crawl of breathless evaporation, however, seemed no more forgiving a mistress.

Applejack counted the pews as they flashed by in her periphery. She had never counted them as a child, but there seemed to be more than she remembered. The march down the center aisle of church procession had never felt like the last mile in a death march before.

Applejack tried to think those words away. Her brain aided her, having only room for the insistence of her movement. She moved as fast as she could manage, her limbs shuddering with the sudden force of her exertion. And still they were too slow.

She heard, from feet away, a choke propelled by a final slip of oxygen.

Her hooves felt finally worthwhile when she reached him.

There was no controlling her momentum. She collided with Braeburn’s body clumsily, and her heart screamed at her as it heard the noise of her impact. Braeburn’s stomach and chest convulsed as Applejack slammed into them. Applejack cringed as a cruel gasp left Braeburn’s mouth, like the sound of rain-soaked firewood being extinguished by a soggy burlap sack.

Applejack cursed in her head. She felt the clammy texture of Braeburn’s fur against her skin already. Time was still moving too slow.

Desperation. Chewing her tongue to keep from babbling, Applejack searched for a hoof-hold on Braeburn’s outstretched limbs. His hind legs shuddered slightly as she touched them, and she screamed, screamed at herself, move, move faster, move move move move move.

With enough of a foot-hold to be satisfactory given the circumstance, Applejack forced herself under Braeburn’s body and tried to lift—up.

The sputtering gasp of a tiny trickle of air parted Braeburn’s lips.

But Applejack couldn’t revel in her satisfaction.

Braeburn was heavy. His otherwise well-toned frame weighed on Applejack surprisingly so as she attempted to hold him up, straining every muscle in her back and available anywhere else to keep him up. To keep his legs warm. To keep him breathing.

Braeburn’s breaths came with a sound like a choked inflation pump, sputtering with death and stale air.

Applejack looked around. She normally reserved what little prayer she believed in for private requests after evenings of contemplation—but now, she prayed. She scanned her periphery desperately, needing something, anything, to rescue her from the situation she was suddenly in. To rescue her so she could rescue him. She needed to move, but her legs were pinned in place by the weight on her back.

Another breath died in Braeburn’s mouth, burbling out in lieu of the words it might once have held.

Move, she thought to herself. Move, she thought to herself. Move, she thought to herself.

Her legs screamed at her in protest.

“Please,” she said, managing it between the mouthfuls of her own breaths.

Clatter. Stool.

It came to her suddenly; four wooden legs leapt out like the always visible solution to an unsolvable problem. It was there, but the logistics were the difficult part.

Applejack weighed the difference in action in her head. Her legs already felt inches away from giving out.

“Buck,” she whispered to herself.

As she sloughed Braeburn off her body, her mind reminded her of the seconds. It was unnecessary. She could hear the spurts and stammered shivering movements of his tongue.

Wishing she could break the whole church in half and lay Braeburn evenly on one side to catch his breath, Applejack threw the stool toward her cousin, letting its legs skitter across the ground.

The stool skidded toward Braeburn’s limply hanging frame, now barely animate with the occasional twitching. Her vocabulary of possible profanity died in her throat along with the scream she forced to stay under as the stool tilted to its side, meeting her toppled on her return.

Move.

She moved her limbs like she had forgotten how they worked, but managed to force them in tandem to pull the bench upright and align it to what she hoped was Braeburn’s center of gravity. She leapt onto it, and held her breath as she felt it shudder under her weight.

But it held. So she grabbed Braeburn with her forelegs around his lower half, and lifted. And held.

Braeburn let out a tiny, muffled gasp through the constriction of the noose. Applejack could feel her own lungs beg in sympathy, wishing she could take over, and breathe for him, and suck in mouthful after mouthful of air and make it right and he was so heavy her legs already hurt again—

The arrangement of her body against his was as inelegant as anything could be. Applejack tried to keep her chest pressed up against him as she moved, struggling to force her posture to stay strong enough to keep him up, with slack on the rope hanging from his neck to the sturdy beam above. She needed to reach the rope, but she couldn’t let go. And he was heavy, so much heavier than she could ever have expected. All the weight of Braeburn’s slender-looking frame compounded on her like a sack of rocks, dulled from their airy lightness with the crushing pressure of impending death.

Applejack could hear the faint breaths growing even fainter, wheezing through tightening rope and a potentially crushed windpipe.

She had to undo the rope. She tried to wiggle her body to the right angle, reaching one of her hooves up and swinging it in the air ineffectually, scrabbling for even just a touch of the rope, so she could hold it, and pull it from its place around her cousin’s neck. She needed to undo the rope, but she couldn’t reach it, and Braeburn’s weight on her served as a reminder that given the slightest shift too far, the wheezing that was the only sound in the church could slow to a stop.

Applejack swiveled and held Braeburn around the back, standing on her hind legs. If all fours had made her feel sore and unstable, now she was teetering on the precipice of complete collapse. But it wasn’t a matter of what she could do, or what she thought she could hold; she needed to reach the rope, and this was the only way to do it.

With the strength of her only remaining breath, Applejack lunged forward with her mouth and caught the thick noose between her teeth. Her body screamed at her, reminding her with the quivering of her muscles that she was seconds away from falling apart completely and abandoning Braeburn to the unforgiving tightness of his self-selected lasso.

She tried to be quick, but the rope was uncooperative.

Trying to undo a hangman’s knot with her teeth was something Applejack had never imagined attempting. She would have been loathe to take it on her own advisement even now, because the knot was tight, and thick, and unforgiving, and her teeth and tongue and snout were all like clumsy boxing gloves on the keys of a piano. She jerked her head in one direction and felt the knot go slightly tighter.

A jerky creak drew her attention. It followed with a shift of her body backwards. She clenched her teeth around the rope and forced herself to stay in place, her legs wishing to desperately to melt out from under her like the outer skin from the white-hot iron that was her muscles in their distress.

Another creak. The piano bench shifted further away.

In desperation, Applejack jerked her head to the side again with a likely feeling length of rope between her teeth.

It slipped out from her mouth without giving an inch. The bench shifted again, and Applejack slid further away, now barely holding herself against Braeburn’s body.

“Gosh darnit!”

The silly almost-curse echoed in the empty rows of the church. Applejack said it with more anguish on her tongue than anypony had ever sworn before, let alone in the supposedly sacrosanct halls of what had once been a place of worship.

Now it was empty. The words of misguided ministers that had meant nothing, and everything, were gone. Only two ponies and the remnants of air between them remained.

For all the strength she had found in herself over the years—the strength to be capable, and honest, and hardworking and self-sufficient and always there when others needed her—now, she felt weak. She felt helpless. And the world acclimated her frustrations perfectly, leading her to the climax of her distress in that single, mouth-drying phrase. She could say no more, because all she wanted to do was to scream and scream and scream, and tear the world apart around her.

She wanted to undo the rope.

She found it in herself to continue. Buried away in a hidden pocket of her consciousness that was beleaguered on every side by the physical anguish of her pose, the burning of her muscles and the sudden onset fatigue of every tendon, she found the strength to try one more time. With her body still barely held forward, keeping Braeburn from the full tautness of the noose with shaking hooves, Applejack grasped for the rope.

Her teeth found it again, and she tried to deconstruct the assembly of a hangman’s knot in her mouth.

She felt the tiniest looseness as one bit slipped ever so slightly from the other.

Applejack mumbled the words to a prayer as she worked her lips over the unsavoury, tough material. The one she remembered from her childhood; the one she had said every day at church without fail, until she’d learned that the Princess of Equestria held no stock in prayer.

Celestia bless us, with all your grace, to look upon your shining face...

Applejack felt the stool lurch under her again, and held on to her cousin and her posture with only sheer force of will, just the tips of her hooves now on the polished wood, her legs stretched almost to the length of her whole body.

...for though we may not be as pure, we know you wish us to endure...

Yes. Yes. Applejack felt this part slip away from that part, and the whole structure loosened, giving her a sudden excess of rope to work with. But she had her footing now, and she knew what to do next.

...the hurt of anguish and of strife, and to remember all through life...

Applejack let out a sort of delirious cry into her mouthful of brown fabric. She tugged once, and the knot undid, finally and completely, and let her cousin go.

He fell with her to the floor, the bench finally slipping from behind her hooves. Applejack felt the breath forced from her lungs as Braeburn landed on her chest and stomach like a right hook thrown directly into her solar plexus. She coughed, and her breathing became overtaken by panicked sounding gasps, air shrieking as it was sucked past her teeth and down her throat.

Braeburn sounded the same, gasping and panting and wheezing. His breathing was more restrained, as though his body couldn’t be convinced he had gone so long without air. Instead of Applejack’s all-consuming, chest-wracking gasps, Braeburn sucked in air relatively quietly, his eyelids fluttering as the world resumed around him. The blood trapped above his neck flowed free and found its place in his veins, which made his skin tingle.

...that every pony’s life is worthwhile, if only just to find their smile.

Braeburn twitched atop Applejack’s body and turned to the side, waving his foreleg through the air. He moved and fell, landing on the cold wood of the church floor with a muffled expulsion of air. Applejack, despite her own sudden lack of oxygen, turned to him as he moved. He turned with her, onto his back, and rested his head on one of his forelegs, opposed to the hardness of the floor underneath him even in the desperate clutches of his body’s insistence for breath .

The church filled with the sounds of breathing. Applejack laid next to Braeburn, watching him cough and collect himself through his lungfuls of oxygen. She had composed herself after the force of her compelled exhalation, but still watched. She eyed the rope in the corner of her periphery, wishing it to a special fire in Tartarus when it eventually departed.

Braeburn had no sooner regained the slightest semblance of his chest’s capacity of air than his lips moved, mumbling unspoken sentences in his still persistent attempts to breathe again.

Applejack placed her hoof on Braeburn’s shoulder and rubbed, reassuring him with a soft, insistent pat, the same she might give to a frightened cat.

Braeburn didn’t let the gesture stop him.

“I... I-I’m... s-... s-sorry... c-cuz...” he managed through his panting. He raised his free foreleg to his face as he spoke, and the tears he had barely left behind reassembled on his cheeks, leaking from the corners of his eyes. Applejack felt the trickle of moisture on her hoof as she rubbed, but she paid it no attention.

Her words came more easily.

“Shhh,” she said. “Just calm down, and try to get some air.”

Braeburn did just that. The tears still wouldn’t stop, but his sobbing quelled to crying, which quelled to sniffling as the air came in. His shoulders shook as Applejack rubbed them, alternating between sides with her one hoof and propping herself up with the other.

After more time than either of them could measure, Braeburn’s breathing sounded almost normal.

It was dark outside. Instead of pastoral solar warmth, the shimmering glass windows of the church let in the faintest ambling beams of moonlight, that painted the church floor with tiny splotches of their silver; washing over, in particular, the two bodies next to each other by the church’s piano.

Applejack looked at her cousin through the moonlight. She looked over his desert-yellow coat and his mop of frazzled-looking hair. She looked at the hat that, somehow, despite everything, had managed to stay on his head. She looked at, out of the corner of her eye, the rope that lay dangling beside both of them, its delicate interweavings disassembled into a single coil that just reached the floor of the church.

Of course she had been able to untie it.

Applejack’s hoof-rub pulled away and turned suddenly into a jab which Braeburn recoiled from, more from shock than anything else. He looked at his cousin with blurred eyes, blinking his tears out of the way and looking through his body’s still lingering request for more air.

“You didn’t even tie the rope right, dummy,” Applejack said.

The church focused suddenly on the soft wheeze of Braeburn’s breath.

It counted four pained sounding inhalations before Braeburn gave up, by choice, the first air since his decision, with a snort. The snort turned into a chuckle, and Applejack joined, starting a chain reaction inside herself. Both ponies chortled, then laughed, then roared.

But neither of them paid attention to that. They laughed because it was right, and Applejack was correct. If he’d tied it properly, neither of them would be laughing; so, in a way, they laughed in defiance, suddenly and all at once on terms with the discarded pieces of the way they had been only minutes ago.

Braeburn’s chicken-scratch hoofwriting was a bright red on his notebook, its pages open like a fat, winged bird waiting to take flight from the music stand. Applejack couldn’t see it from where she was, nor had she noticed it in the first place.

I’m sorry, it said.

The laughter subsided after a while. It was replaced by silent understanding.

Chapter 9

Braeburn was brought to a good hospital.

Not the best that bits could buy, though that was partly out of the proximity to Ponyville in the first place. As far as anypony was concerned, there was only one hospital in Ponyville. Applejack fussed and protested when this was pointed out, but no one jumped to allay her fears. There was just one hospital; there always had been.

Braeburn would have looked out-of-place if they’d let him keep his hat. Instead, they had tucked it away for safekeeping, leaving him feeling frustrated and, also, a little bit naked. He wore the blankets up to his chest after the intoxication of his sleep had worn off and refused to take them further than a few inches away from his chin before they returned to their original place. Applejack sighed, but made no inquiries about what her cousin’s motivation might be other than perhaps a simple affinity for hospital sheets.

She couldn’t imagine why anypony would want that, though.

Her friends had shown up with minimal announcement, saying they had overheard and wanted to come see if Braeburn was okay. Applejack had declined to let them in, bustling at the door and saying that they could come back later; her cousin needed his rest. But Braeburn undermined her, saying from the comfort of his cot that it was fine and he’d be happy to see them.

“I need to relearn everyone’s names sometime or another,” he’d said.

Applejack had glared at him like a nervous mother, but after a few seconds of Braeburn’s earnest smile she had relented, and opened the door to let her friends inside.

Braeburn had done his best to greet the five-pony procession warmly, despite his lack of mobility. The doctors had stressed they weren’t worried about his health, overall; Applejack had done a good job untying him, and there seemed to be no permanent damage to his breathing or any part of him otherwise. Nevertheless, they had said it would be best to keep him overnight for a day or two, just to give him time to recover. Braeburn hadn’t agreed, but Applejack’s vote had overwhelmed his own, accompanied by the steely stare and grim expression that went with it.

Over the next half-hour, Braeburn reacquainted himself with Applejack’s friends.

Pinkie Pie had made herself visible first, bouncing to Braeburn’s bedside and bombarding him with get-well cards, most of which she had written. She had restrained herself, knowing too much exuberance would earn a disapproving look from Applejack, but Braeburn had thanked her for the cards and gotten off with a boop on the nose before Pinkie scurried back outside.

Twilight had given him a book and some nervous looking well-wishes, both of which he accepted with gratitude. Fluttershy was torn between her normal nurturing instinct and the awkwardness of what felt like meeting someone new, and had settled on a squeaked ‘I hope you feel better soon’ before she dashed off. Braeburn had smiled at the timbre of her timidness, and thanked her on her way out the door.

Rarity had come, and it had been awkward.

As she walked up to the bed, Braeburn felt his cousin’s eyes on him. There was an unspoken tension in the air even if Rarity couldn’t see it, and Braeburn wasn’t sure if the origin was from himself or elsewhere. He felt a sort of pressure, like he was about to come face to face with something he should have confronted a long time ago.

Rarity had said nothing objectionable. She was careful and considerate as she rubbed Braeburn’s shoulder with her hoof and said she was happy to see him in Ponyville and that she hoped he recovered soon.

The moment her hoof left, Braeburn thanked her and was surprised at the earnest tone in his own voice. He felt the weight depart at once. His heart thumped loudly in his chest, as though it might finally be free of constriction.

Rainbow Dash had come last. Utterly unlike herself, she had huddled in the corner as her friends said their ‘hello’s and ‘get well’s. The window at the side of the room caught her attention, and she stared out it, watching the wind shake the boughs of the nearby trees in the field aside the hospital. She had avoided looks from Applejack, including a very pointed ‘ah’ that Applejack had let out before catching herself and returning to silence, abandoning the beginnings of a potential sentence.

Dash moved slowly up to Braeburn’s side as the room neared its previous occupancy. She looked him over for a moment with a soft smile on her face, her cheeks carrying a hint of blush.

Braeburn smiled at her unassumingly. He didn’t have trouble remembering her name.

“Rainbow Dash, right?” he’d asked.

Dash had nodded, and grinned.

Though her mouth twinkled at the edges like she had something important to say, she kept silent until she was next to Braeburn’s bed, and then, still silent, had leaned towards the stallion and placed her mouth to his ear. Her lips moved as she whispered something.

Applejack craned her neck to hear, but found the conversation too low for her to understand.

Dash went on for a minute before she pulled away. Braeburn’s expression changed, turning into a mixture of surprise and giddiness. Dash’s face looked the latter half as she pulled herself off the bed. After a second, though, her eyes flickered as though a light had sparked to life behind them. Without further pause, she had leaned back, and, to the surprise of both Braeburn and Applejack, given Braeburn a kiss on the cheek.

And then she had fled with blush burning its way onto her face.

Applejack narrowed her eyes at the rapidly disappearing multicoloured tail, but her expression softened as the door closed. There was no need to be overly protective.

That left the two of them alone in the hospital room again.

Applejack cleared her throat.

“So,” she started, ambling off her corner chair towards Braeburn’s bed.

A knock at the door interrupted her. It was loud and heavy, like a tiny battering ram.

Applejack’s eyes widened, but she went to the door quickly. Big Macintosh peered at her through the crack between the doorway as she carefully pulled on the handle.

“Oh, Macintosh,” she said with a sigh, “it’s just you. Did ya wanna come in, or...?”

Mac nodded and made his way inside, nudging Applejack out of the way.

For the first time during his visiting hours, Braeburn felt uneasy.

The girls visiting had been different—he had no attachment to them other than the names in the back of his head that he could only foggily recall. But Big Mac was different. He was family, and more than that, family that had invited Braeburn to visit, for a vacation away from his life of obligation and work and duty and scorching desert sun. He was Braeburn’s cousin, and one who had only seen the results of Braeburn’s inner turmoil second hand.

Braeburn felt a white-hot shame well up in his throat.  He could feel the tears tickling the corners of his eyes.

“Big Mac,” he said, and let the name stand on its own for a moment as he tried to speak through the lump in his throat. He couldn’t look Mac in the eyes.

“I’m real sorry that I... after you and Applejack invited me up an’ all, I didn’t mean to...”

Mac moved surprisingly quick for such a large pony. In an instant he was at Braeburn’s bedside, looming over him with an unreadable expression. Big Mac was no behemoth by pony standards, but above Braeburn’s slim, still recuperating frame, he felt gigantic.

Braeburn felt a tiny wail brew up in his chest.

It was forced from him almost instantly as Mac grabbed Braeburn’s body and pulled him into a hug. It was a hug that made Braeburn feel as though he was being squeezed between pieces of red, furry lumber. He wanted to protest in service of his recovering airways, but decided to grin and bear it. The hug only lasted a few seconds before Big Macintosh let go, and Braeburn fell back to his bed, slightly out of breath.

“Don’t apologize for nothin’,” Big Mac said. “Nothin’s a bother with family, as long as you're okay at the end of the day.”

And that weight too went away. Braeburn’s throat recovered, the lump disappearing with Big Mac’s words.

“Thanks, cuz,” he said, almost whispered. Big Macintosh gave him a nod, and then turned to the door as quickly as he came. Applejack held it open for him, and the latch clicked into place as the door shut, leaving Applejack and Braeburn alone in the room again.

The wind blew outside, waving the tree branches towards the window like eager hands in the breeze.

Applejack sighed, and Braeburn did the same. Neither of them seemed to have the strength for words.

A minute or two of silence passed between them. It was a soft silence, not at all imposing in any sort of awkwardness or arresting lack of speech. It was silence simply for the sake of nothing to say. Neither of them needed words; the understanding had passed between them already, through heartfelt glances—and, most concretely, from the reassuring touch of Applejack’s hoof as she had consoled her cousin, coaxing the breath back into his lungs and muffling the ‘sorry’ that wished for freedom on his tongue. She had said, with that touch, that no more ‘sorry’s would be necessary.

But still, Applejack cleared her throat again.

Something needed to be said.

“Cuz,” she said.

Braeburn didn’t respond right away. He let the hollow sound of the hospital room carry the absent conversation for a moment, until after a minute he turned to his cousin. The look on his lips said ‘sorry’. Applejack shook her head.

“Don’t,” she said.

Braeburn shook his head too.

“I’m sorry, Applejack. I didn’t mean to... all of this, I’m so sorry...”

Applejack was at the bedside immediately, leaning into Braeburn’s shoulder with a hoof around his back, squeezing him and rubbing up in down. She murmured a ‘shhh’ into his ear, though the tears that might have crept into Braeburn’s eyes hadn’t found their way there yet.

“It’s okay,” she said. A few more rubs of her hoof followed, joined by shaky breaths from Braeburn.

The two of them held each other like that for a while, Applejack holding Braeburn more than he could hold her back. That was okay, because it was him who needed it more.

Applejack’s tongue wetted her lips after a while longer, and she opened her mouth in imitation of speech a few times before finally saying something.

“I... I can’t not ask, cuz. You don’t gotta tell me, but I gotta ask.”

Braeburn nodded into his cousin’s foreleg. He pressed his snout into her fur, still miraculously dry in absence of tears.

“Why?” Applejack asked.

Braeburn shook his head. His muzzle rubbed against Applejack’s coat.

“You don’t gotta tell me,” Applejack said.

Braeburn lightened his shaking and looked up. Applejack gave him her best smile, weary though it was. Tempered in the same way all displays of happiness were in the confines of a hospital.

Braeburn let out a long, slow breath.

“I think I do,” he said.

Applejack held her her hoof on Braeburn’s back, pressing it softly into his fur.

“It’s ’cause... ’cause you were the only one who mattered.”

Applejack let the words sink in for a minute before opening her mouth. Before admitting she needed more, when she hadn’t wanted to ask for anything.

“‘Mattered’?” she asked, her tone as soft as she could manage it.

Braeburn gave a short nod.

“On... on the way over, on the train.” Braeburn straightened himself out on the bed, and Applejack withdrew her hoof from his back.

“On the way over, I spent the whole time with... with my book, thinkin’ about what I was gonna say, how I was gonna say it. I went through the morning a million times, wondering what I’d tell you, and how you’d take it. And I never thought... I didn’t think you’d...” Braeburn’s sentence trailed off, his voice trembling a little bit. Like the tears might start coming now.

Applejack moved her hoof to reach out to him, but Braeburn shook his head.

“But why, Braeburn? I know what I said was... I know I was actin’ a real fine fool, and nothin’s worse than what I said then. I know I was a dummy.” Applejack lowered her head. Her eyes flickered as the alley conversation flashed across her recollection. “But that doesn’t mean you had to go an’... there’s no reason to do that. I can’t imagine how everypony woulda been if I hadn’t found you...”

“I’m sorry, Applejack.”

“No, wait. Listen, you don’t have to... you don’t have to be sorry. That ain’t what I’m aimin’ for.” Applejack lifted her head again, and her mouth turned sour. “I just mean... I can’t imagine why somethin’ silly ol’ me would say could make you wanna... go and do somethin’ like that. Even if it was the stupidest thing I coulda said.”

Applejack smiled in her self-admonishment, and Braeburn returned the gesture with one of his own, softened by the heavy atmosphere of the room.

“I know, AJ. I didn’t... I wasn’t really thinking when I did all that. I mean, that’s gotta go without saying, right?”

Applejack nodded.

“The thing is though,” Braeburn began, turning his head to the side to stare out the nearby window. “The thing is... I knew, even though it didn’t make sense, that I still felt like I had to do it. Because... on the way over, on that train, thinking about all the things I was gonna say, coulda said, mighta said to tell you how I... how I felt... I knew that the only reason I was thinking about it so much was because it was you. Because out of all the ponies in the world I could have told, you’d be the one who mattered.”

“But why me?” Applejack’s voice practically fell apart as she leaned on the corner of the hospital bed. She tried to hide the shudder of her words behind a grim grin, but Braeburn turned to her, and his expression faltered as he saw the sadness welling up in her eyes.

“Because—”

“I ain’t nobody special, Braeburn. Heck, I’m just your cousin. You coulda at least told Big Macintosh, for gosh's sake!” Applejack threw her hooves up in the air, and the tears were real then, though they were in her eyes, where she hadn’t expected them.

Braeburn lifted his own forelegs as Applejack fell forward, and he held her the same way she’d held him a minute ago, rubbing his hoof on the small of her back.

Applejack didn’t sob, but she sniffled into her cousin’s shoulder, and wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye.

“Why me, Braeburn? Why was what I had to say so important?”

Amidst the sound of Applejack’s sniffling, Braeburn’s mouth started and stopped once or twice, as though he himself was having hard time finding the answer. But his eyes caught a brightness of understanding shortly thereafter, and he nodded, more to himself than anyone.

“Because... because you’re family, AJ.”

Applejack lifted her head from Braeburn’s shoulder, and turned to him, her cheeks slightly damp with tears.

“I thought about tellin’ somepony else... tellin’ the folks in Appleloosa, tellin’ anyone else in the family. But you know... you know we’ve always been close. The closest. Even if we ain’t lived in the same place for ages, even if I coulda told someone else... it wouldn’t have mattered. You’re my family, and that’s what’s always mattered most to me.”

Braeburn sighed, and let Applejack go from between his forelegs at the behest of her movement backwards.

“I guess just... the idea of my whole family thinkin’ that way about me, especially if my cousin did, the one pony whose opinion really matters to me... well, I didn’t want to think about it, I guess. I couldn’t think about it. And that’s why I kinda... wasn’t thinking.”

The air cleared again. The ambient hum of hospital room machinery and lighting took over again, and both ponies shared a few silent breaths, looking away from each other and into their own heads.

“I’m sorry.” Applejack’s voice broke the silence. She looked at Braeburn, then back down to the floor, hiding her shame in the avoidance of her cousin’s eyes.

Braeburn shook his head.

“It’s okay, cuz. I’m sorry, too.”

The silence returned. Neither pony looking at each other, but hiding maybe-smiles under the somber air of their unspoken sentences.

After a few minutes, Applejack cleared her throat again. She looked up from the floor, her green eyes free of tears and returned to their normal brightness.

Braeburn looked up at her. The two locked eyes for a minute and smiled.

Applejack’s smile beamed even wider, and her cheeks shone with the force of her smirk. “So,” she said, a twinkle in her eyes under the brim of her hat. “Does he have a name?”

Braeburn grinned at her.

Epilogue

He sits on the creaking stool. Nothing in here can bring itself to fall completely apart, though the veneer of the walls and other decor has long since vanished. What was once a place of importance in appearances is now simply a place, but it is a place with a firm understanding of what is right, contrary to the words that have filled it over time.

 Because there’s something everyone can sense, if they search hard enough.

The last strains of the piano finally vanish. The only sound is the bittersweetness of forthcoming tears—not abject in sadness, because he doesn’t feel sad. He feels an ache in his heart, certainly, and it’s not one he’s sure will ever go, but it doesn’t bring the tears by itself today. The tears come from the sound of the song in his ears that has sprung forth from what he can only guess is his soul. The tears come from the trickle of sunlight washing over him like crystalline brilliance around a single, shimmering rock. The tears come because, finally, he feels he can let them out.

A soft creak rings out behind him, the sound of a body removing its weight from a squeaking structure. The clop of hooves on the church floor follows, soft taps on the still intact wood, moving slowly in sequence until they stop behind him.

He cries still, unconcerned with whatever might be there. He cries because, if he doesn’t, then some part of the reason for his tears might still remain. He can accept the ache, but he doesn’t want to feel like crying anymore.

After a while, his sobbing softens. His foreleg is damp with the evidence of his exhaustion. He tries his best to dry his eyes on his hoof, but the firmness makes for a poor handkerchief. He looks like a mess. But he doesn’t feel like one anymore.

He turns, swivelling on the bench away from the invisible sheet music on the piano’s stand, and faces the source of the hoof-falls behind him.

The sun catches Applejack’s coat and adds glimmers of orange to its otherwise pure, vaguely golden glow. Applejack smiles despite her cousin’s tears. She knows that sometimes, everypony needs a good cry, and she’s sure that Braeburn’s is more than deserved.

She still has words inside her. Things she planned to say that didn’t quite make their way out over the last twenty-four hours. Speeches she’s rehearsed into bathroom mirrors, aided along the way by Rainbow Dash’s recommendations, needing to say something, but never sure of what. She wants to talk, and to apologize, and most of all, to listen.

 But right now, she has something specific on her mind.

 She raises her foreleg and places her hoof forward. Braeburn raises his own, and Applejack takes it between both of her hooves, rubbing it softly. Her touch quivers with the betrayal of her own tears, threatening to make their way out if she doesn’t pace her words properly.

 “That...” she begins, but clears her throat abruptly, choking back the salt-water deposits begging for release behind her eyes. She blinks, clears her head, and starts again.

 “That was real beautiful, cuz.” She nods to the piano behind Braeburn’s back, and Braeburn lets a tiny smile grace his lips. Applejack squeezes his hoof between hers before returning to a four-legged stand. She walks to Braeburn’s side and sits next to him on the bench.

 “I didn’t know you played,” she says, the faintest hint of a surprised laugh in her words.

 Through the drying of his tears, Braeburn raises his head and smiles at her.

 “Well, you’re just learnin’ all sorts of things about me lately, aren’t ya, cuz?”

 In the glimmer of his voice, the faintest hint of the piano’s highest note rings out.

 It sounds beautiful

Chapter 3

Braeburn emptied the first of his bags onto the guest bed, letting out a tide of pajamas and bed-time toiletries. Toothbrush. Fetlock trimmers. Eye drops—

“Hair curlers?” Applejack asked, holding up a suspicious swivelly looking object.

Braeburn blushed and grabbed the object from Applejack, forcing it back into his bag.

“My mane ain’t always cooperative, y’know.”

Applejack giggled, and Braeburn rolled his eyes at her.

“You gonna be okay set up in here, cuz? I know that bed ain’t the biggest, and you’re probably used to sleeping on a giant canopy something-or-other, one o’ them crazy big beds from Prance—”

“Actually, I still feel most at home when I’m in a sleeping bag with some rocks for a pillow. Even a mattress is an improvement.”

Applejack laughed and grinned wide at her cousin, her face framed by the sun as it filtered through the window on its descent to the horizon.

“I’m glad to hear it! I’ll make certain not to put any extra work into makin’ you comfortable.”

“Thanks, AJ.” Braeburn grinned. “I don’t need any undue effort on my part. Just happy to see the family again.”

“Now, in terms of making things feel more at home,” Applejack went on, “I could wake you up with a rattler under the sheets. ‘be a bit of an effort to scrounge one up in this town, but I ain’t about to put a price on family.”

Braeburn rolled his eyes, and Applejack snickered at him. After a few seconds of resistance she broke into a full, proper laugh, and Braeburn couldn't help but follow.

After a few seconds, Applejack wiped away a single tear as her laughter settled, and Braeburn did the same.

“It’s good to have you here, Braeburn. Lookin’ forward to spendin’ the next week with you,” Applejack said. She made her way to the bedside table as she spoke, inspecting it for general guest-type amenities: drinking glass, lamp, and a copy of a book she couldn’t recall the name of in the top drawer. Just like her own little Apple-Hotel.

“Are things gonna be okay back in Appleloosa while you’re gone?” Asking about work at home went with an unspoken answer, but she needed to ask anyway, even though she knew what the reply would be. There was no way Braeburn would and take off without putting things in order beforehand. No Apple would.

“Of course. They’re big ponies. They can run the show without me for a few days.”

“I’m just glad we get to steal you away for that long. Feels like it’s been forever since you were around.”

Applejack sprung suddenly toward her cousin, and before Braeburn could react, there were forelegs around him, grabbing him and pulling him close in an unexpected hug. He did the only thing he could think of, which was to hug back.

Applejack squeezed extra hard. Braeburn could feel weight against his chest as Applejack pulled him closer, nuzzling her hat into his. Braeburn returned the hat-nudge, and the brims of their headwear touched as they held each other.

“Feels good to see you too, AJ,” he said.

Applejack gave a final squeeze before she let go, prompting an almost inaudible ‘umph’ from Braeburn. Her eyes shimmered in the fading sunlight, glimmering softly.

“I reckon’ you’re tired from such an early day,” she said,  “so if y’all wanna call it an early night, I won’t hold it against ya’. Just so long as you’re ready for an action-packed day tomorrow.”

Braeburn nodded as he straightened his pillow, adding one or two he’d brought from home, decorated with lace covers and frilly designs all the way to the edges.

“Sure thing, ‘cuz. You’re right in thinkin’ I wouldn’t mind some shut eye if I can convince you to let me catch a few hours.”

“No problem,” Applejack said, already at the door. “You want me to wake you up for breakfast?”

“‘course.” Braeburn threw his final extraneous pillow into place, creating a tower of headrests that seemed bigger than necessary for something he’d forget was there the moment he closed his eyes and dozed off.

He looked at Applejack as he reached his hooves up and removed his hat. His grass-green eyes flickered in the sun, the same way Applejack’s had.

“Do you... do you think Granny Smith’ll make her famous pancakes, on account of my visit and all?”

Applejack smiled just wide enough to keep her laugh at bay. When she spoke, her words carried the hint of the chuckle she had swallowed.

“Ain’t a problem. I’ll make a special mention to her on your account.”

“Shucks, AJ, you don’t have to do that.”

Applejack shook her head emphatically.

“No ‘but’s about it. I insist... Mr. Family Guest.”

Braeburn slumped his shoulders, but Applejack could see the look of anticipation flicker across his face.

“Anything else before I let you catch a few z’s?”

“Nah, that’s all, AJ. Thanks again for having me up. I’m lookin’ forward to the next few days with you and everypony else.”

“And my friends too. You get to meet all of ‘em again,” Applejack cautioned, her voice stern, like she was scolding a child.

“Ain’t gonna have any problems there, AJ.”

“And, you gotta remember their names this time.”

Braeburn swung his foreleg sideways front of his stomach, punching the air in defeat.

“Shoot. And here I thought I was gonna get off easy.”

Applejack giggled and put her free hoof to her mouth as she nudged the door open.

“G’night, Braeburn. Hope you have a good sleep. Come get me or Big Mac if you need anything, alright?”

“Will do, AJ. Sleep tight.”

Braeburn turned to the window before Applejack shut the door. The sun was at the bottom of its arc now, just a tiny bit barely peeking out from over the horizon and bathing everything in a surreal lilac light.

Braeburn sighed as the setting glow washed over him, and all the scenery fit for taking in, stretching as far as his eyes could reach.

With one foreleg, he patted an unopened bag to his side.

“After breakfast,” he said to himself, staring out into the horizon of sunset colours.

He stared for a few minutes more before the overwhelming comfiness of his tower of pillows called to him too loud and he fell sideways into the bed. In only a few seconds he was out like a light, still wearing his vest and hat. He slept well for the most part, but chewed his lip from hour to hour, biting down on it like a foal might during a particularly bad dream.