It Was the Worst of Times

“Ugh! Why won’t this stupid thing work?!”

Applejack paused her unenthusiastic scaling of the porch steps when she heard the voice of her youngest daughter. Brow furrowing in anxious worry, she wound around the side of the house, only to be greeted with the disheartening sight of her daughter absolutely sobbing into the grass.

Immediately, Applejack crossed the small distance between them, and sat next to the distraught foal, nuzzling her softly. Her daughter instantly clung to her foreleg, her tears not subsiding, and matting her mother’s fur as she convulsed with anguish. Applejack dropped a kiss to the top of the filly’s head, rubbing her small back soothingly until the filly was finally able to gain some composure and look up at her mother. Her brilliant orange eyes were red and watery, and her cheeks were flushed.

“You wanna tell me what’s wrong, Little Gem?”

At the question Opal seemed to shrink into herself, almost as if she was afraid of something, pulling away from her mother’s foreleg and looking away, and brushing her cannon with her hoof.

“Mommy, did… did I do something wrong?”

Applejack was taken aback by the question. Of all the statements she had been expecting, that was not one of them. Her brow furrowed.

“No! Of course not, baby, why would you even ask something like that?”

Opal reached up to wipe at her muzzle noisily. “Then… why doesn’t Mom like me anymore?”

It felt not unlike being stabbed repeatedly with a rusty, dull knife. Applejack felt her insides being ripped apart, and a breath wheezed out of her in surprise at the pain. It became almost impossible to breathe. She forced herself to be calm, but her stomach turned to lead. Absentmindedly, she brushed her hoof through Opal’s platinum blond mane, and tried to keep her voice calm. But she was unsuccessful; her voice shook tremendously when she opened her mouth.

“Sweetie, your mother could never not like you.” She whispered. “She loves you more than anything in the entire world. Where in Equestria did you get an idea that she doesn’t like you?”

Opal’s reply was muffled against her mother’s foreleg. “Then why doesn’t she ever want to spend time with me anymore?” her voice was gargled, and Applejack felt hot, fresh tears on her coat. “We… we used to always do things together… but ever since she got sick that one time… it’s like she doesn’t want me around anymore. She won’t play with me or practice magic with me or read me stories or sing to me and Topaz like she used to. She’ll feed Jasper, and that’s it. And,” the filly’s voice began to tremble and the rusty, dull knife doubled its thrusts. “Since we don’t practice together, my magic has gotten worse. I can tell.” Opal sobbed, just once. Just one, heartbreaking sob, and her next words killed Applejack. “Maybe… maybe I did something to make her mad at me.”

Applejack had to take several deep, calming breaths to regain her senses. Something inside her was beginning to bubble, pitch, rage. When she was certain she could speak without losing control, she nuzzled her daughter nickering into her mane, but didn’t pull back, instead keeping her muzzle pressed against Opal’s head.

“Opal,” she whispered hoarsely into her daughter’s poll. “You have done absolutely nothing wrong. Nothing at all. Please, please don’t think that you have, okay, sugar? None of that is your fault.”

Opal blinked her orange eyes up at her mother hopefully. “It’s not?”

Applejack closed her eyes, fighting against the rage flowing in her blood. “N-no. Mom has been… feeling really bad lately. For several reasons. She’s still… pretty sick. And it’s probably going to take her a while to get better.” She opened her eyes and completed her nuzzle, playfully tugging at some lose hairs of Opal’s mane with her teeth, bringing forth a small giggle, albeit a gurgling one.

“But why is she sick? What happened to her?”

Applejack hesitated for a moment, trying to sort out her explanation, and fighting the rage flowing through her. “Sweetheart, we all have things inside of us… they’re called hormones. They’re little things that can control how happy or sad we are. And sometimes, for girls especially, those hormones mess up, they get better, of course, but it can take a little while. But that’s what’s wrong with Mom. Her hormones aren’t working right. And that’s why she’s so sad and tired all the time.”

She could tell that the explanation, while not exactly comforting Opal, proved to give her some relief and context as to what was happening with her mother lately. Applejack breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that her explanation had not gone over the filly’s head.

“So,” Opal smiled hopefully up at her. “I didn’t do anything wrong? She’s not mad at me?”

“No, Little Gem, she’s not mad at you. I’m so sorry if she—that you felt like she did. Mom loves you, and so do I. She just... needs to get better, okay?"

Despite her sage words, Applejack found the anger inside of her rolling and pressing. White and hot and fierce and violent.

“But hey,” she said, leaning down and winking at her daughter. “Until Mom gets better, there’s no rule saying that only she is allowed to teach you. How about we go visit Auntie Twilight and see if she can give you lessons, hmm?”

Opal’s eyes lit up hopefully at the suggestion. “Really, Mommy? Yes!”

“Sure,” Applejack smiled back, despite the monster of rage inside her gut roaring at the fact that she even had to rely on her friend for something like this. “Let’s go see right now.”

Applejack walked back towards the house, having dropped off Opal at the library, with no small avoidance of Twilight’s worried, questioning gazes.

With every step she took, her breathing became shallower and shallower, harsher and more ragged. Her blood pounded in her ears. Her muscles constricted, every inch of her tense with pure rage the likes of which she had never quite felt before.

In her entire life, she couldn’t remember being so incredibly, irascibly livid.

It was a foreign sensation. As if something primal and animalistic had been ignited inside of her, something with claws and teeth, something on a mission to annihilate anything that reduced her  precious little girl to such anguish.

It just so happened that this time, that anything happened to be her wife.

By the time she slammed open the door it was as if an unknown force was pushing her into the living room, where Granny Smith sat in the rocking chair by the window, staring at the gardens. Applejack paid her no attention even when she looked up at the bang of the closing door, moving faster than she thought possible she rounded the corner and barged into the master bedroom with all the ferocity of a spitting, hissing lioness. Tears stung her eyes, and her heart slammed itself against her ribs, and she knew this was it.

The breaking point. That awful, horrible place where she couldn’t even hold herself together anymore. Last week’s horrendous altercation in their bedroom, Rarity’s inability to voice her love for her—if there was any left—had left Applejack sobbing into the soft hay in the barn beside the house where she had slept that night. Even that paled in comparison to this, this nauseating, white-hot rage that seemed to utterly eradicate her easy-going and friendly nature.

“You need to do better.” She snarled as soon as she caught sight of Rarity on the bed.

Rarity didn’t even flinch. For a moment, Applejack wondered if she had even been heard.

Growling, she made her way around the bed to stand in front of her wife, and the second her eyes fell on that face, she felt her resolve shaking a bit. So beautiful, yet so sad and lost, eyes staring past Applejack’s shoulder, but clearly not seeing anything. Clearly, she was not even in the room.

Applejack was torn between knowing that yelling would only make the other mare close off more, and thinking that she had already closed herself off as much as she could and perhaps yelling would be the only way Applejack could get through to her.

“You need to do better.” She repeated forcefully, and Rarity blurred in her vision as droplets of tears stuck to her eyelids. “This cannot go on this way, Rarity! You can’t keep doing this! You want to check out of this marriage? Fine! You don’t want me anymore? That’s fine too! But you don’t get to check out of being their mother! You don’t get to toss them aside like they don’t exist!”

“You know what I just walked in on? Opal, crying her eyes out because she thinks her mother hates her!”

That statement managed to do what nothing else had. Rarity snapped her head to Applejack, and those blue eyes finally zapped into the present and met green. Rarity opened her mouth and moved it around, trying to say something, but only succeeded in shaking her head, and finally reaching up and plugging in her ears in a desperate attempt to block it all out.

And just like that, Applejack felt her rage finally break. It was like a bursting dam; a crack followed by waves and waves of rage, and then a small final trickle before complete silence and stillness. Seeing Rarity there on the bed, her ears plugged desperately and her head shaking in a half-aware state finally made her break. She felt her legs buckle and give out, and she caught the bed to keep herself partially upright, but her knees met the floor.

“Please, Rares.” She begged, and finally her own tears fell freely. “Please tell me how to fix it. I’m begging you. I’m on my knees before you, begging you, please tell me what to do. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything. I know you’re angry at me. I’m angry at myself too. But I need to know why. I need to know so I can fix it. I have to fix it. I can’t lose you, Rarity. Please.”

She whispered something unintelligible and Applejack shook her head.

“I can’t hear you, sugar.”

“You couldn’t bring it back.” She repeated, and although the words were accusatory in and of themselves, the tone was anything but. It was saturated by guilt and shame.

And suddenly it hit her like three tons of brick. This was why she was angry with her. Not because of hormones. Not because of the depression over having lost the foal.

But because Applejack herself couldn’t bring the foal back.

The only sound in the room was Rarity’s muffled sobs. Applejack worked her mouth fruitlessly for a total of five minutes before she managed to speak around the block in her throat.

“You blame me.” She croaked. “You’ve blamed me all this time. That’s why you keep pushing me away.”

And suddenly the room felt suffocating. She couldn’t be here. She had to… she—she had to…

Applejack pushed herself up off the bed, nearly scrambling away.

It’s all your fault.

“Okay, Rarity.” She croaked. “You want me to stay away? You win. I’ll stay away.”

She turned and left the bedroom, forcing herself not to run or fall apart completely until she got to the barn, where she knew she would be spending the night again, and probably for a long time.

As she walked, she prayed to Celestia that Rarity would run after her, call her back, or anything. Anything at all.

But she never did.