Dawn in Ponyville came much the same as it always did. Celestia’s sun peeked over the horizon, casting the first long, slender shadows of the day across the rustic village and rolling countryside. A few roosters crowed at Sweet Apple Acres, their calls answered in the distance by another that belonged to Fluttershy. Most townsponies woke up with the sunrise, but there were very few who were often already awake to watch the day begin. The eldest Apple sibling was one of them.
Big McIntosh plodded through the halls of the family farmhouse with gentle, practiced steps. Dawnlight streamed through windows with curtains mostly drawn, lighting up beams of feathery motes that drifted lazily through the air at his passing. Applejack would no doubt be rising soon, but it was a Saturday and he was inclined to let his youngest sibling sleep in a little while longer. Apple Bloom had returned home well after dark following some late-night mischief-making escapade with her Crusader friends covered in sticky tree sap - something it seemed to Big Mac that those three managed to do with almost comical frequency.
As usual, he’d stayed silent and let AJ handle reprimanding her, both for being reckless and for staying out so late. It was pretty rare that whatever Apple Bloom and her partners-in-crime did brought anything other than a smile to his heart, if not his face… well, except maybe that one time with the fireworks during the Summer Wrap-Up Festival. And the time they started a gossip column. And the time when they’d dosed him and Miss Cheerilee with a love poison.
He allowed himself a tiny smirk. That one hadn’t turned out so bad.
Regardless, he was just glad that his littlest sister had friends that she could play and just enjoy being a filly with. That was something he and AJ had missed out on growing up, and he’d be damned if he was going to let little Bloomer miss out on it too.
He turned onto the stairs and started down, being careful to avoid putting his full weight on the second step which he knew to be a bit squeaky. He spared a quick glance for the closed door at the end of the upstairs hallway, where the other member of his family that he didn’t want to wake resided. Granny Smith had taken to sleeping in a little more as of late. She hadn’t so much as mentioned it, and both he and AJ hadn’t asked out of respect, but he had a fair notion as to why.
Granny was getting on in her years. It was no secret, in fact it was a point of pride that her parents - his great-grandparents - had founded Ponyville back when she was just a little younger than AJ. Earth ponies, particularly those of the Apple family, were well known for their longevity, but the number of candles on Granny Smith’s birthday apple pie each year put all the rest to shame. She even edged out her favorite cousin Apple Rose and old Auntie Applesauce by a hooful of years. The old mare had been a part of Ponyville and Sweet Apple Acres for as long as anypony in town could remember; she was one of those things that you thought would always be there just as sure as Celestia raises the sun every morning.
But Big Mac had a pretty good memory, and with it he recalled a day not too long ago that the sun didn’t come up like it was supposed to. Likewise, he expected that Granny Smith had less sunrises left in her than she let on.
The well-barreled stallion made it to the bottom of the stairs just as he heard hoofsteps on the wooden floor above, signaling his sister’s awakening. As per usual he headed outside, intending to have the cart filled with the first load of empty apple buckets and ready to go by the time Applejack was finished with her morning routine. Applejack seemed to think that taking care of her mane, tail and coat was some kind of big secret, and had made him Pinkie Promise to never mention it to anypony. Did she honestly believe that if folks found out the rough-and-tumble cowmare took twenty minutes to make herself look presentable every morning that the whole town would suddenly start saying she was going soft or becoming too prissy?
An involuntary snort escaped Big Mac’s muzzle. Honestly, stranger things had happened in Ponyville, and he wasn’t about to tempt fate or Applejack’s wrath - or Pinkie Pie’s wrath for that matter, if she found out he’d broken one of her namesake promises. Even so, some days he was convinced that he’d never understand mares.
Never one for a heavy breakfast before a morning of hard labor, he picked up an apple from the bowl on the kitchen table as he passed by, popping the whole thing into his mouth and chewing as he slipped out the door to the porch, making sure not to let it slam shut. As he trotted toward the barn in the crisp morning air, a decent breeze tugged at his mane. His thoughts drifted back to the matron of the Apple family.
To everypony else Granny probably seemed the same as always. She was the same kind, caring, and loving mare that all of Ponyville was used to seeing. She was lively despite her years, albeit a little senile sometimes, but Big Mac knew that at least some of that was an act as well. He’d seen Granny move and speak with an almost startling level of lucidity from time to time, particularly whenever Zap Apple season rolled around and she started feeling like her old self again, but if he was honest with himself he realized that those coherent moments were becoming fewer and farther between. He was sure that Applejack had noticed it too.
If there was one thing that his family knew better than apples, it was Apples, and they both suspected Granny wouldn’t be able to keep up the facade of a fresh young fruit for much longer.
With a muscled foreleg, Big Mac pushed open the main door of the barn, grinning inwardly at how smoothly it swung wide. After the last reunion, when a runaway cart had brought the structure crashing to the ground, the whole of the Apple family had lent a hoof to rebuild it from scratch, and by golly if it wasn’t the best barn the Acres had ever seen. He turned and slowly ran his forehoof down the door frame. In the wood he could feel the love and pride that went into its construction. The strength of the Apple family had built this place; had become a part of it, and unlike some of the barns that had come before Big Mac had no doubt this one would be here long after he was gone.
Certainly long after Granny Smith was gone, he loathed to admit.
He gave a derisive snort as he left the doorway behind and stomped over to the large, four-wheeled cart in the middle of the barn, taking one corner of the canvas tarp he’d laid over it the night before between his teeth and whipping it off with a single swift twist of his thick, muscled neck. He didn’t like letting his anger get the better of him, but he also didn’t much like the places his train of thought kept leading him back to. Especially today, of all days. Maybe losing himself in his work would help.
After unhooking the cart’s tailgate and checking to make sure that the wheels and axles were all shipshape, Big Mac walked to a towering stack of empty apple baskets and turned about. With a practiced, well-aimed kick to the bottom of the closest stack, a quartet of buckets tipped off the top and landed neatly on his back, still nested inside one another. He carried them over to the cart and rolled his shoulders to offload them into the bed, pausing for a moment to stand them upright. He trotted back to the stacks and half-bucked down another four, repeating the motions with years of muscle memory as his mind turned inwards once again.
He had no reason to be angry; he knew that. The way he saw it, everypony dies eventually, except for maybe the Princesses. It was as much a part of life as being born. Celestia knows he’d dealt with the loss of ponies he cared about before - he and Applejack both had - so why? Why was he suddenly so filled with a frustrating fury over something that by all rights might not come to pass for another couple of years? Of course, Big Mac already knew the answer.
Minutes slipped by as he filled the cart with more baskets, the sounds of his kicks and wood grating on wood the only ones that filled the otherwise empty autumn morning.
Apple Bloom. She’d only been a baby foal when the three siblings’ parents had passed away. She didn’t remember them at all, so to her young mind her family had always been the three of them: himself, Applejack, and Granny Smith. Bloomer hadn’t yet faced the pain of loss that the rest of them had. She saw her family the same way the rest of Ponyville saw Granny Smith, as something that would just always be there. Big Mac knew what it felt like to have that ripped away from you. He knew how bad it could tear at a little filly or colt’s heart, and all the troubling, unanswerable confusion it brought to the surface. There wasn’t anything in the wide, wide world of Equestria that he wouldn’t give to spare his baby sister from that suffering.
And yet it was the one thing he couldn’t protect her from.
He heard the crack of splintered wood and a crash behind him, and turned to see that his last kick had demolished the apple baskets at the bottom of the stack and caused the ones above to topple over. He flicked his ears at the mess, but seeing that the cart was already mostly full he resolved to deal with cleaning it up later. AJ would be ready to go soon anyway.
After flipping up and latching the tailgate, Big Mac plodded around to the front of the cart and backed up in between the shafts. He chomped down on the leather harness and secured it to his yoke.
The day that yoke had first been put around his shoulders was one of the happiest of his life. He’d been trying to convince Pa to let him plow the fields on his own, but Pa had just laughed that warm, kind laugh of his and told Mac that he wasn’t quite big enough yet. Pa told him to run along and play with his sister, or to head on into town and make some friends, but being as stubborn as the day is long, Mac hadn’t listened. Instead, he’d gotten up extra early the next day - before dawn and way before anypony else in the house - and snuck out to the north field dragging the plow with him all the way. By the time Pa had made it out there, he found an exhausted, dirt-covered colt pulling a plow without a proper yoke to attach it to and a field that was nigh on half-turned already.
Mac thought for sure that he’d earned a scolding, but his Pa hadn’t said anything at first. He’d just trotted over, pulled the yoke right from his own back and put it around Mac’s shoulders. It had been a touch big for him, but as his Pa finished strapping him in and said ‘finish up’, Mac’s barrel had puffed up with so much pride that he didn’t even notice. The rest of that field, and the next two over, were plowed before lunch.
Come to think of it, that’d been the day that Applejack had gotten her Stetson. She’d spotted Pa and him walking back from the fields later on. Being an Apple, she insisted that if her brother was going to start working in the fields, she would too. Their Pa had laughed again, and without even so much as a thought, pulled off the Stetson he never left the house without and plopped it onto filly AJ’s three-sizes-too-small head. He told her that the hat was very important to him and that he didn’t want to risk damaging it out in the fields, so he was charging her with taking care of it during the day while he was out working on the farm.
Of course, that hadn’t stopped her from tagging along with them and finding ways to help out anyway. ‘Apples will be Apples’, their Ma used to say.
The memory of the way her little face had beamed from under the rim of that hat warmed Big Mac’s heart even now as he trundled forward, cart full of empty baskets rattling behind him, out of the barn and into the bright morning light. There was nothing he loved more than seeing his sisters happy. He’d been overjoyed when Applejack met Twilight Sparkle a few years back and started to reconnect with some of her other friends. He’d never been prouder than when he first heard about the whole ‘Element of Honesty’ bit and about how AJ was now a hero to all of Equestria, along with her friends.
Pride wasn’t the only thing he’d felt that day though. Relief. Relief that AJ had proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that she was her own mare. Sure, she’d taken over the day to day operations of Sweet Apple Acres long before that and proven that she was capable, but after hearing about - and sometimes being caught in the middle of - all the adventures she had undertaken, Big Mac knew for certain that she could handle anything that life decided to throw her way. As her brother he would still always be there for her, but she no longer needed him to protect her, and that was a load off of his mind. Ma an Pa would’ve been the proudest parents in the world, too.
Big Mac trundled effortlessly forward, the cart bouncing along after him as he made his way to a dusty path that led to the east fields, where he and AJ would be spending most of the day bucking apples, and stopped. He stooped low and bit a single stalk of wild wheat from a stray plant that had taken root in the grass near the path, chewing the end gently.
Could the same be said for himself? Had he ever done anything that would’ve made them proud? He never went on any adventures or saved the world like Applejack did, and she did all that in addition to running the farm. All he did was the grunt work; the physical labor needed to keep things moving smoothly, and of course AJ helped with that too. There wasn’t really anything he did that his sister couldn’t do just as well, if not better. She even did a better job looking after Apple Bloom, just like their parents had wanted. He couldn’t even save the little filly from the pain of losing someone close to her.
That was it, he realized. That was the last thing his parents had ever asked him to do: take care of his sisters. And he couldn’t do it. What kind of older brother couldn’t even manage to do that one, simple thing?
Big Mac felt the moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes as he drew and exhaled a halting breath. Something like this always happened today. He thought that he’d gotten used to it years ago, but for some reason this time it tugged at his heartstrings harder than most. He squeezed his eyelids shut, trying to will his composure back into place.
“Mornin’, Big Mac!”
He jumped ever so slightly at Applejack’s upbeat voice, ears popping straight as he quickly swiped a hoof across his face in a rather desperate attempt to rub away any visible signs of sadness. His sister’s hoofsteps sounded closer until she appeared beside him, a few stray strands of her soft blonde mane fluttering in the light morning breeze. “Hooo-wee!” she whistled softly. “And what a mornin’ it is. Think the Princess went an’ outdid herself this time.”
He followed her gaze out over the rolling fields that spread from the base of the small rise the Apple family home and barn were built on. The sun was just clearing the horizon, its glowing rays bringing bright, distinctive colors to a landscape that was flush with life. The emerald sea of apple trees was spotted with tiny ruby flecks, and the weather pegasi had done such a great job of keeping the sky clear throughout the night that Big Mac could see all the way to the far edge of Sweet Apple Acres, and the darker forest of the Everfree just beyond.
“It really is beautiful.”
Big Mac spared a look for his sister, noting that she too was now admiring the farm and not the morning sky. He turned his gaze forward again and switched the wheat to the other side of his mouth.
“Eeyup.”
“And today’s the day.”
“...Eeyup.”
Applejack heaved a sigh, lids drooping slightly over her emerald eyes. Together they stared out across their farm for a long moment, just as they did every year, offering their silent respects. The wheat stalk bobbed as Big Mac chewed over his thoughts. If it weren’t for AJ, none of this would be here right now. She carried this whole place; the whole pride of the Apple family on her shoulders, and ponyfeathers, if she didn’t make it look easy as pie. So many times over the years he’d thought for sure that they’d bucked their last apples, and lo and behold Applejack would figure out some way to keep the farm afloat. Now she had a part in doing the same for all of Equestria.
Big Mac stole another sideways peek and smiled inwardly. Applejack was a mare he could never compete with, he knew that much. He couldn’t have asked for a better sister, though Bloomer was a close second. They’d probably be tied if it hadn’t been for that fireworks fiasco.
“Hey, Mac,” Applejack said softly, her voice pulling him from his reverie. “Do… do ya think Ma an’ Pa would be proud of me?”
He turned his head to look directly at her, and had to try very hard to mask his confusion. Her head was slightly bowed and her hat was pulled forward so that he couldn’t see enough of her face to read her expression, though her ears were drooped low. Was she being serious?
“I mean, I know if they were here they’d say they were proud, but the things they cared about most were the farm and family, and I don’t know that I’ve done a very good job of handlin’ either one.” Sweet Celestia, she was being serious. She glanced over at him and frowned.
“Don’t ya gimmie that look; ya know exactly what I’m talkin’ about,” she said. “We’ve been just barely scrapin’ by for goin’ on six years now. Seems like every couple of weeks it’s somethin’ else... worm infestation, fruit bats, me darn near wreckin’ the family reunion. Shucks, there was that other time that I wouldn’t let nopony help me with the harvest, and that other other time I ran away from the farm just because I didn’t win a lousy rodeo.” She paused and made a breathy sigh. “I keep puttin’ everythin’ our family built at risk because I’m just too darn stubborn and too darn proud to accept a helpin’ hoof when I need it. What would Ma and Pa say to that? What kinda example does that set for Apple Bloom?”
Big Mac just stared. Everypony knew him to be tight-lipped, but right now he couldn’t think of anything to say even if he wanted to. Where was all this coming from? He knew his sister better than anypony, or so he thought. Applejack did have a tendency to beat herself up over her mistakes, but he never got the impression that she had her tail in this much of atwist.
“And don’t even get me started on Apple Bloom,” AJ continued, her voice wavering ever so slightly. “I try to do right by her, honest I do, but Celestia knows I don’t have an apple-buckin’ clue how to raise a filly. I just wanna be her sister, ya know? I wanna be her friend, but half the time all I do is end up yellin’ at her.” She paused to suck in a breath, and he couldn’t not notice the wetness gathering in her eyes. “All those times we did the dumbest things growin’ up, and not once did Ma or Pa ever raise their voices at us! How’d they manage it? What’m I doin’ wrong, Mac? What’m I...” Applejack trailed off, tears pouring unbidden down her cheeks. She reached up and pulled her Stetson down, trying to cover her shame.
Big Mac put a hoof around his sister and pulled her close, careful to avoid the cart’s shaft. She buried her face in the red fur of his shoulder and sobbed. He didn’t know where to begin telling her how wrong she was, so he just held her. The breeze picked up a bit, the apple orchards around them hissing as the wind flowed through their leaves, almost loud enough to cover up the soft sniffles that came from the mare. He stared out over Sweet Apple Acres, at the land his family had cultivated and nurtured for decades. AJ was right; it was absolutely beautiful, and it was all thanks to the love and dedication she poured into it every single day. She had to know that, right?
Once her shoulders slowed their shaking, Applejack pulled away from her brother and took a deep breath as she looked out over the fields again. “I’m sorry Mac, I didn’t mean to just dump everythin’ on ya like that, but… well ya know.”
He nodded silently. He’d almost been there just before she’d walked up, after all. Another brief moment of silence passed between them.
“Thanks Mac. I really mean it,” Applejack said, turning to face him as she took off her Stetson and held it over her heart. “I know I don’t say it often enough, so thank ya for always being there for me… and for Apple Bloom. Yer the hardest worker and ya got the biggest heart of anypony I ever known, and this farm…this family wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. We might not have our folks around anymore, but the way I see it me and Apple Bloom are still pretty lucky.” She smiled. “We got the best big brother anypony could ask for watchin’ out for us.”
There was a sudden gusty breeze, ruffling their manes. Big McIntosh swallowed hard, failing to get rid of the lump in his throat as he started to choke up. Applejack just smirked at him before replacing her hat. She trotted in front of him, giving his chest a passing, playful shove as she headed off down the dusty path.
“Well,” she said with one last sniffle, “the east fields ain’t gonna buck themselves, and I’ll be darned if Ma and Pa are gonna see their little Apples slackin’ on a beautiful day like today!” She trotted off down the path with a bounce in her step that would have almost been more appropriate for Pinkie Pie.
Big Mac watched her go for a moment longer with a thin smile, letting the cold morning air dry the unwept tears at the corners of his eyes. What had already been a beautiful morning suddenly seemed downright radiant. Best big brother anypony could ask for, huh? That sounded awfully familiar.
“C’mon, slowpoke!” Applejack called back to him. “There’s work to be done!”
Mac snorted happily and took one last glance at the vista before turning the cart down the path after his sister.
“Eeyup.”
Author's Note
Soooooo... I'm not really sure where this came from. The idea just kind of lodged itself in my brain and before I knew it I had three pages typed. Seemed kind of silly not to finish it by that point.
Hope it didn't suck! 
