With Love

The sound of his wife’s sobbing echoed in the hall as Filthy Rich reached the stairs to the main floor. The pale brown business pony took in a deep breath to fortify himself in light of the situation, but as he released it his head drooped nearly to the floor in dejection. Somehow he felt a shot of vat 1983 Hayvana Gold might have been more apt to help. But this moment was not the time to be indulging in sugary liquors.

Another resounding sob from down the hall pulled Filthy’s mind back from the contents of his office liquor cabinet to his current predicament. An unfortunate convergence of separate events had ignited a conflagration in his little private corner of the universe like a match in a pool of lamp oil, a pool that he happened to be standing in the middle of at the moment. Another deep breath steadied his nerves only just enough to allow him to descend the stairs from the upper story of his home and attempt to deal with the next level of the disaster.

As Filthy Rich reached the foyer landing he shifted his downcast gaze to the ponies in the front room. The soft violet eyes of one pony seemed magnified from behind her glasses as their owner glared scaldingly at him from beside the mulberry-purple alicorn beside her. The stern glare of the young alicorn was nothing light in its weight either.

Nearby, seated on a different cushion in the large front room, Rarity looked none too pleased at the moment either. Filthy knew her mother, Pearl, was up in the master bedroom sitting with Silken, offering comfort and support her despondent friend. The only time he had ever seen his wife so distraught was just after Silken had recovered from the infection that had nearly claimed her life shortly after foaling Diamond. The doctors had told her that the infection she’d contracted, though cured, had rendered her incapable of ever having another foal.

The light of the coming sunset from the window behind the silvery-white unicorn cast a shimmer of gold on her back and spread a deep shadow from under her deep amethyst mane that shrouded her face in darkness. It was a darkness that allowed her sapphire eyes to seem to gleam bright and sharp, half lidded in disgust at the pony she now regarded.

“I …” Filthy began to try and offer an explanation to the three mares in the room, but changed tack as his voice caught and offered a more personally pressing question to the trio. “Has there been any word on Diamond?”

“No, Mr. Rich, there has …” Princess Twilight began to answer only to be cut off by the younger pony beside her.

“How could you!?” Silver Spoon’s sharp pitched voice plunged into the conversation like a dagger. The young almost mare-grown filly took an aggressive step forward as she spoke. “How could you do that to Diamond? How could you pair her off with some colt she had hardly ever spoken to, and then tear her family and dreams from her?”

Filthy Rich could see the tears welling in the corners of the eyes of his daughter’s best friend as she stabbed her accusations into the conversation. He could only imagine what Diamond must be feeling at this moment.

“Silver Spoon,” Princess Twilight interjected at the first available pause, stepping up to place a protective wing over the smaller pony’s withers. “That’s hardly appropriate behavior for a situation like this. To be accusing Mr. Rich like that, it’s inflammatory.”

“It, …,” Filthy Rich stumbled forward in his speech again only to be cut off by the other pony in the room. The thought of his beloved only child hearing the words, and coming from her own mother’s mouth no less, that Silver Spoon had recited to them all later clawed at him coldly from within. Silver had to her credit as a friend tried to catch up to Diamond as she fled from the spa after hurling her tiara at Silken in a tartarusly indignant rage, but had been unable to keep up the pace Diamond set and had eventually lost track of her.

The stallion’s quivering heart gave a pained grieving twist. Fate had stolen any chance of more foals from Silken, and now she had possibly driven their only child from the family forever with another twist of fortune and poorly chosen words taken out of context.

“Quite so, inflammatory.” Rarity sniffed, “and immensely rude my dear Silver. Such talk is highly unbecoming of a young diplomat such as yourself.”

Filthy Rich gave a small sigh of relief at the silvery-white unicorn’s defensive statement. The relief was too short in being though as the fashionista’s voice quickly dropped a demi-tone as she turned her attention to him.

“However, not nearly as rude as knifing one’s own blood, and family friends, in the back, I think.” The amethyst-maned mare’s voice was a smooth as glass as she spoke and as sharp as the trio of diamonds on her flank. The words though cut deep, deeper than the business stallion could stand for as he felt his hindquarters buckle and his rump sag downward to settle on the floor, his head hanging as he did.

“Rarity.” The Princess gasped in surprise at her longtime companion’s comment.

“Rude perhaps, Twilight darling, but the question does beg an answer.” The unicorn calmly countered with an aloof toss of her head.

“Mr. Rich doesn’t need to explain anything to us.” The young alicorn added her words to the reproachful glances she shot at the other two mares as she stepped up to where Filthy Rich sat on the foyer’s mat feeling like a smear of pale brown earth, or worse, that had been wiped from the bottom of somepony’s hoof. She placed a hoof softly on his and extended a wing in support around him, as her mentor had done so many times to her over the years.

“He doesn’t?” Silver Spoon quirked sharply at her mentor’s statement.

“No, he doesn’t.” Twilight replied with a firm kindness to her aide.

“Of course,” Rarity chimed in, her tone shifting to a more sympathetic one couched with her own embarrassment for her lapse of decorum. “I’m terribly sorry, that was far too callous of me. Please do forgive me, it’s just your wife has been such a long time friend of my family. I guess I forgot myself for a moment.”

“Thank … you.” Filthy finally managed to choke out. For all the times Diamond had spoken of her admiration of the power of a princess, and what she could do with that power, Filthy Rich knew now that Diamond truly knew nothing of it. With a simple genuine act of compassion, Twilight had shown him a glimpse of the true power of a Princess, in a way Diamond could never imagine.

Even as the young alicorn helped him back to his feet, allowing him to steady himself, her soothing tone made words he did not want to hear still seem buoying. She gently turned his head with a hoof as she spoke, to where he could see through the window of the back door where a large red pony sat on the edge of the gardens in back.

“Unfortunately there is some pony you do owe an explanation to.”

Filthy swallowed hard as he made his way to the portal and then beyond to where his best friend’s son, his hoof picked sire of his daughter’s foals, sat like a scarlet statue on the cool green lawn. A calm mountain of equine muscle shrouded in the cool late afternoon shade of the shadow of the house; a mountain that Filthy feared could turn into a volcano, with a fury as striking and red as the young stallion’s coat.

“McIntosh?” Filthy found it hard to keep his voice from trembling as he made his approach, almost as if to a gallows.

“Mr. Rich.”

Filthy could feel his heart fall in his chest, the noose line snapping taught at the flatness of McIntosh’s reply. Gone was the closeness of ‘Uncle Fil’, now replaced with a stony detachment from the colt he had watched grow into the finest stallion he knew of.

“I want to apologize to you for this fiasco McIntosh. I’m sorry. I should never have brought you and Diamond into this. It was vain of me to try and get you to save my family with that Cerberus-pissed-on stud contract. I should have known I’d let Diamond go too far over the years, that she was too far gone in her pettiness and shallow desires for power and avarice to be redeemable. It was my own fault, and I should have just faced the truth of my misdeeds and seen the financial cliff I was about to fall off of and let it be.”

Filthy Rich gave a sigh of resignation as he finished, the silence of the garden weighty and barren. The red stallion merely sat there, wheat stalk swishing between his pursed lips like the tail of a distempered cat. Filthy turned to leave, his muzzle dragging on the grass, as he slowly turned away back to the house. His failure was complete, but he had admitted it.

“Nnope.”

Huh? Filthy nearly toppled onto the patio steps as the one word answer hit him like a full on buck in the side. Had he heard right? Did McIntosh just tell him he was wrong? Filthy Rich staggered for a moment as he recovered himself, questioning the cryptic meaning of the crimson colt’s wording. Did he just refuse the apology? What did he just say? Mean? Do? Nope? Nope what?

“Beg pardon, McIntosh?”

“I said, ‘Nnope’, you’re wrong, but you’re also right. You let your prize apple go rotten; I’ll give you that. What she’s done over the years at times wasn’t right sweet at all. When you offered her to me, it took a lot of thinking, but I realized that she really was just a rotten apple.”

So I’m right? Filthy dropped his haunch onto the bottom patio step in disbelief as the red stallion continued.

“But the thing with a rotten apple is that most ponies would just look at it and see a rotten apple, their first instinct is to throw it away, it’s no good.”

“Eeyup.” Filthy nodded as he let Mac continue on.

“I knew you didn’t want to throw your daughter away, but I had to find out if there was something there I could work with, and there was, her seeds.”

“Mrmphm?” Filthy cocked his head at the statement. “So the foals …”

“Nnope, not that kind of seed that comes from us … uhm ...”

Filthy felt a wry smile creep onto his lips as the Big Red stallion struggled with sexual modesty and words. Same old McIntosh, he thought.

“Nnope, the kind of seed from up here.” Mac recovered himself and tapped a hoof to his temple. “An apple seed has to be taken out of the apple and put in the ground to grow. But ponies are different from apples. Ponies can grow inside themselves if they want to, if they really want to. Not like having a foal from … you know … bedroom stuff, but from growing inside themselves on their own. I just had to show Diamond there was something inside herself she could grow from, and not just the rotten fruit that everypony looked at her like.”

Filthy just sat there as him brain digested the massive philosophical pile that McIntosh had just unloaded on him.

“You mean you believe in her?”

“Eeyup.” Mack nodded.

“So why the extra foal?” Filthy didn’t know why he asked that but Mac answered calmly all the same.

“Figured I might need some extra time to get through to her once I figured things out. I’m just real sorry things had to happen like this, I only hope that the seeds I planted had time to start growing already.” Mac let out a thoughtful sigh as he changed gears, “Has there been any word on where she went?”

As if to punctuate McIntosh’s statement a loud crash emanated from the front of the house accompanied by a chorus of yelps from the mares inside. Mac and Filthy quickly made their way back inside to find the front door knocked in and a pile of blonde mane and gray coat and feathers piled unceremoniously atop it in the foyer.

“Oops, sorry about that,” the pile spoke as the it began to right itself, “but I though you’d want to know right away. Dinky just got home and told me she sold Diamond a ticket at the train station.”

“Train ticket?!” the collected others gasped, “To where?”

Finally back on her hooves the pegasus mare shook her head a moment as if to clear her head before answering, though it did nothing to correct her permanently misaligned golden wall-eyes.

“It was for Appleoosa, … I think.”

* * * * *

The warm summer sunset bathed the yard out front of the barn-house of Sweet Apple Acres in a beautiful golden light as a sunset colored mare danced merrily about the yard, a battered brown Stetson on her head, and a bottle of McIntosh Special Reserve Cider clutched in one front pastern.

Diamond ran away, fiddle dee dee

Diamond ran away, fiddle dee doe

Diamond ran away, fiddle dee dee

Kicked to the curb my darlin’

Applejack took another pull from the now one-third-full bottle as she danced about on her hind legs, jigging like she had an infestation of jitterbugs in her flanks. The sensation of her namesake liquor was both cooling and warming at the same time. The smile that split her fair freckled features was as broad as Sweet Apple Acres itself, and the tears in her eyes were from laughter from the exhilarating joy welling up inside her. It was an effervescent joy she found in hearing that not only had Diamond Tiara’s parents disowned her, but that the little pink meadow muffin had torn a strip off her mother’s own hide out front of the spa and disowned them back, and then had gone so far as to leave town!

How could this day get any better? The country mare thought to herself as she looped the yard again. Maybe winning the overall title at the Equestria National Rodeo this year? The orange mare grinned wider, yeah that would be the ice-cream on the apple pie for sure. She drank a toast to her dreams.

Actually, there was one thing that made this day better, Applejack remembered: Fluttershy! That was right. Her butter-yellow pegasus friend had, upon finishing her shopping, made her way back to where AJ had been minding the Sweet Apple Acres stand, and with her typical reservation and shyness inquired about exactly how Earth Pony stud contracts worked. More specifically she had been so bold as to ask if ‘anypony’ could agree to participate.

Applejack took another celebratory swig. Shoot, Fluttershy had all but come out and asked if Big McIntosh would be the sire of her first foal! That was a contract AJ knew she would heartily endorse. The shy pegasus was almost an earth pony by trade anyway. She was an animal caretaker after all, not a very pegasus job in the farm mare’s mind. Heck, Fluttershy had even moved into the old Posey place, as Granny Smith used to call it, after coming to Ponyville and ‘Old Posey’ had moved into the Shady Pines rest home. Posey had been Ponyville’s previous wildlife caretaker, and an Earth Pony.

The fact that Fluttershy was both a neighbor and a PFF made her almost like family. Shoot, she was even an ‘Honorary Apple’ after all; Big Mac’s foal in her belly would make her a genuine Apple in every sense of the notion family as far as AJ was concerned.

A movement of red against the white rail fence near the gate caught her eye as she wiped the remnants of her most recent toast to FlutterMac joining the family on the back of her cannon.

“Heya Mech, how’sh the luckiest colt in Equestria?” she waved her greeting to her big brother.

“AJ, you’re drunk.” The heavy red farmer eyed her up and down.

“Neh-whey, Ah’m right happy and a little dizzy from dancin’ is all.”

“You smell like your name.”

“Eeeyyupp!” Applejack mocked her brother’s normal reply, “and you can too if you care t’ join me in a shot to celebrate that little pink toad hopping right on out of here,” the orange mare made a hopping gesture with the bottle she held for emphasis as she spoke, “and finally being out of Apple Bloom’s life fer good.”

“Nnope.” The big pony dropped flatly.

“Oh come on, if y’re all pissed about losing a place to park y’r colt pole, y’ don’t need worry none. Flutterzshy’s looking f’r y’ t’ to deliver a load of y’r special ‘Apple Seed’ to her ‘private orchard’ as soon as she an’ Granny get the contract done. ‘Sides, that Dumb’and Tush’ara weren’t no good f’r ya any way. She didn’t want t’ be here, she didn’t want to be on no apple farm, an’ she didn’t want to have some mud-hoof hayseed soiling her sophisticated little plot hole. Good riddance.” AJ spat on the ground to make her point as she finished, then refreshed herself from the bottle in hoof.

“And why, if your friend wants to offer a contract for me to cover her, would she want to talk to Granny? Diamond is my lead mare now, if anymare wants to have me sire a foal on them they’ve got to get her permission first, besides mine, not Granny’s. I also remember a young filly who didn’t want to stay on some muddy apple farm, who wanted to be a sophisticated city pony like her Aunt and Uncle Orange in Manehatten, a little filly I helped her raise her train fare for.” The expression on the big red colt’s face hardened as he leaned into his words as well as AJ’s personal space, his nostrils flaring as his calm slowly eroded.

“I came back!” Applejack thundered back at her brother, jabbing him in the chest with the mouth of the bottle as she did. “I came back ‘cause I’m better than her. She’s just a rotten pony not fit to be part of this family.”

A blur of scarlet motion sent the bottle of applejack careening from the drunken pony’s grip to burst against the side of the barn.

“My sister, Applejack, came back, and she’s a much better pony than you are, standing there celebrating a young mare who doesn’t even think she had family to come back to now. If Ma and Pa could see you now, they’d be in tears over this Applejackass of yours.”

The smack of Applejack's hoof on the side of her brother’s face sounded like a tree snapping, the crescent shaped welt turning dark under the stallion’s scarlet coat. Applejack glared at him daring him to do something, but he only turned and walked off towards the main orchard and the Everfree Forest.

Shows him, she smiled as she watched the slapped stallion withdraw, she’d gotten the last word on him finally and he’d had to back down. She turned back to find where her younger sister had been standing quietly behind their brother. “Apple Bloom, c’m’ere and give your sister a big hug, Diamond Tiara won’t be hurting you an’ y’r friends any more, she’s gone f’r keeps now.”

The scarlet maned near-mare-grown filly with the tool packs on her work saddle just stared at her sister a moment.

“Yeah Sis,” the youngest Apple turned her head slightly in shame as she spoke, “I’ll give you a big one, but I think big brother should have given it to you instead.”

Applejack’s rump hit the ground hard as her hind legs dropped from under her. Her head was ringing brightly, a harsh tinny sound, as she watched her sister, and Apple Bloom’s mirror like twin, gallop away toward the family grove near the orchard gate. A warm, moist, sensation made its way down her upper lip, spreading onto her lower one. A similar, but faster moving, sensation of liquid warmth was spreading beneath her as she brought her hoof up to her muzzle and watched it come away crimson.

As realization took root within her, Applejack cast another glance to where now only one Apple Bloom passed through the gate to the small gallery grove that held the family graves. Near the gate stood two ponies that the stunned farm mare now remembered only dimly from her childhood. As the light sandy-orange mare and oaken brown stallion looked back at her, Applejack could see the tears in her parents’ eyes.

Her ability to remain upright now totally lost, AJ reached out her bloody hoof towards the spectral figures as her own tears blurred her vision, before fading to black.

“I’m so sorry …”

* * * * *

As Diamond Tiara stood on the small railway platform in the fading dusk a cyclone of rage swirled anew inside her. In many ways it was not unlike the one that had brought her here, wherever ‘here’ was.

The memories of what had transpired that afternoon tore at her.

… filly or colt, it really doesn’t matter to us, so long as Diamond doesn’t get the business.

Diamond could still hear the words of the light-lavender mare as Silver Spoon had opened the doorway of the Ponyville day spa. She had been talking back over her shoulder to Lotus and Aloe. It was only then she had seen Diamond standing there.

“Mother!” Diamond remembered gasping, “How could you! You said if I let McIntosh breed me I’d save the business. You and Daddy never wanted to save the business for me! You wanted the foals to save the business for you! I HATE YOU!”

She remembered grabbing the tiara from her head screaming, “If all I am to you is a way to get another foal to replace me with, then you're as dead as that shit slide of a cunt you dropped me out of, both you and Daddy!”

She remembered then hurling the diamond accented piece of silver jewelry at her mother. Diamond though had never been the most athletically coordinated filly in school, and her prowess lived up to it in that moment as well. The tiara had struck the edge of the door that Silver Spoon was holding open and bounced carelessly astray, though not without breaking a little first.

Diamond hadn’t cared to look. She had turned and run. She could barely see for the tears in her eyes, the torrential thunderstorm of lashing hateful emotion that washed through her in those moments. She could dimly remember Silver Spoon calling after her, but she couldn’t make out the words.

See, they hate you, they all hate you. She remembered the voice in her head speaking to her, smooth and seductive. They never loved you; they only wanted to use you. But you showed them, you will show them all.

It was the little scarlet horned homunculus that she had squashed with her will the first night she had let McIntosh cover her. Diamond Tiara could practically feel the little horned pixie sitting on her withers leaning up to whisper in her ear as she ran.

They’re evil, all of them, it said, hate them. Use your hate, and your hate will make you powerful!

The little horned imp had kept whispering in her ear as she ran urging her on as to how she would show them, show them all how wrong they were to deny her, and how sorry they’d be when they came begging to her some day only to have her callously use them for her own enjoyment, as they once used her, then grind them out like the butt of a cigarillo while she laughed at their suffering.

That had been the basic plan, as she practically threw the small purse of bits McIntosh had given her that morning as they left Ponyville Medical at the pony at the ticket booth for passage on the next train going anywhere. Anywhere away from her evil family and the ponies around them.

She had boarded the outbound express with a liar’s sweet smile on her lips and an air that nothing was wrong. She had found her seat and settled in for the trip, her mind grooming ideas the way a griffon grooms its talons before battle.

As the train had sped further down the tracks Diamond had been trying to organize her thoughts. She had very limited resources available for one thing; maybe she’d have to consider selling herself if she couldn’t swindle some pony out of the bits to cover her basic expenses. Of course her mother’s cousin, Velvet Glove, had made her fortune in the brothel trade. Perhaps, Diamond thought, she could succeed there too.

The problem there, Diamond determined, was it left her open to being exploited, an unacceptable outcome. It was the very reason she had decided against it a month ago. A better course she determined, was to find an entry position in some small company, not unlike her father’s. Preferably where there was an unattached son to be seduced, or a widower stallion who might be receptive to a firm flank and a tight, yet available, plot.

Yes … the little dark cloaked imp chortled from beneath its cowled hood as Diamond began to doze in her seat as the train kept its steady rhythm down the line. We can find some easy fools like that. Use your hate, make yourself strong. You will show them, show them how wrong they were to hurt you. I foresee you becoming the most powerful business pony in Equestria.

Powerful. The horned imp cooed breathily to her as Diamond smiled at the thought.

Strong. It whispered, and in her mind Diamond had nodded in agreement.

You’re a strong pony Diamond. The words drifted through her memory. But it wasn’t the raspy undertone of her dark cloaked ego imp. The words drifted through in a calm assuring baritone.

McIntosh! Diamond recalled the big red stallion saying just that to her earlier that morning as they had walked to town. Everything she could recall in the last three weeks about him, he had never once intentionally tried to hurt her, and when he had ended up hurting her he had always stayed by her side to hold her and comfort her.

Diamond was bolt upright in a blink of an eye as the train pulled into the station with a great sloughing hiss of bled off steam. The dark, rage-filled thoughts scattering like dry leaves in an autumn wind as she sucked in a great gasp of air.

You’re a strong pony Diamond, and you need to start doing what’s right, not what’s easy. She remembered McIntosh’s words clearly now from earlier that morning. It was not what she had done. It had been too easy to give in to her darker side, to run from her problems as opposed to dealing with them.

Even if her parents had betrayed her, McIntosh never had. He had always insisted that it be her choice to accept the stud contract. He had stood up to her parents for her right to choose her own path when she had first found out about it. Even on that first night as she had laid there on the mounting bench, exposed and vulnerable, he had ensured she knew she had the right to choose her fate and that she exercised that choice. He had always given her the final decision to accept the consequences, and had stayed there by her side when she had.

Diamond dropped her saddlebags on her back and trotted off the train abruptly at that moment. She knew without a doubt she had made a bad decision earlier that day. Regardless of what her parents had done, she, and she alone had made a big mistake in choosing to run from her problem and not facing it.

Why did it bother her that she was not going to get her father’s business? She knew she had already lost it all before she ever heard her mother say it at the spa. McIntosh had told her as much that first night before he ever covered her. He had made sure she knew what the reality of her situation was well before ever moving to consummate their agreement, and he had given her the choice to accept it or not.

Now as she stood alone in the fading sunset on the tiny rail platform, Diamond snuffed out the last embers of her storm of self-loathing. It wasn’t going to do her any good now anyway to be tearing herself up inside. She had made many bad choices in her life, she freely admitted to herself. Now, because of her latest, she found herself alone, in a strange town, without a bit to her name.

Well, I guess I get to start from scratch, and I better put my best hoof forward, if I’ve got any chance of getting back home. Thought the solitary pink pony as she trotted down off the platform and headed for the small rural hotel next to what looked like a general store, only halting for a brief pause as she took a moment to contemplate her situation, and the town sign on the corner of the station platform.

But where in the name of Celestia’s cake-bloated backside is Hooferville anyway?

Author's Note

Well, if the last chapter ended on a slightly sour note, I think this one swung the pendulum back. I did say that I' was going to run Diamond out of town on a rail, and I did, with a little emotional roller-coaster thrown in. I also was looking to find a good set of POV's to bring AJ's background story arc to a conclusion in a way as well. Though I may have another card or two to deal her yet, ... (discordian grin goes here).