She had known her friends for two years, during which time they had embarked on numerous ill-fated journeys for their cutie marks. It was always a lot of fun, sometimes quite scary, and never dull. She had really enjoyed their company, and the times they had spent planning and plotting their next missions.
Yet, after everything they had been through, she could not quell the thought that something was wrong. That the misadventures of the Cutie Mark Crusaders were driven not by youthful indiscretion but by somepony’s need to keep the status quo. She hated to think of it, but perhaps one of her friends was secretly sabotaging their every effort. But, why would they do that?
So, today was to be the day that she faced them with this question. Each and every muscle in her legs fought against her movement into the clubhouse with stiffness and ache earned from a day of training her hind legs for bucking apples with her sister. It didn’t help that she had also worked hard to sow the seeds for what would become a fresh crop of apples, and that left her tired and dirty. Still, she thought, the stiffness in her muscles would only help her to stifle any urge to run, and that was a hindrance she welcomed at a time like this.
• • •
The clubhouse seemed uncharacteristically short on life that morning, a rather dull Saturday that promised little excitement and even less in the way of cutie marks. Apple Bloom didn’t have those in mind anyway; there was something more important than that turning in her head. A conversation she needed to have. A question she needed to ask. She wondered if, after today, the Cutie Mark Crusaders would still be in action.
Enough of that, no time for worrying; the talk has to happen today.
She could hear the familiar buzz of Scootaloo’s wings carrying her scooter up the path to the clubhouse, the sound of a wagon’s wheels spinning wildly behind it told her that both of her friends had finally arrived. In all the time they’d known each other, Scootaloo had yet to manage much more than a minute of air time. Still, she had vastly improved on her scooter, going so far as to create an impressive number of new tricks and that had never escaped the notice of either of the other two crusaders.
The clip clop of hooves on wood, one set suggested that the owner was very light on her hooves, betrayed the entrance of Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle; both of whom found themselves surprised to see Apple Bloom already sitting in the clubhouse. It had always confused both of them that this filly lived on the land on which their clubhouse stood, and had never managed to meet them early or on time.
• • •
As they fell from the height of the zip line that friction had just destroyed, they screamed in fear and on some level even a little excitement. You could count on Scootaloo’s Cutie Mark missions to end disastrously, although that prevented them from being the least bit boring. It was for this reason Apple Bloom so readily forgave her friend’s numerous life endangering ideas.
Another day of tree sap and disappointment, not unlike many others, but for some reason this one caused Apple Bloom to gaze at the scenery from a different angle as it were. Scootaloo’s plans, even the best laid, never really had a chance at ending in success no matter how much preparation had gone into them. She hadn’t taken the time to consider the implications of such a thought in the past, but today she was listening to this same friend gush about Rainbow Dash whilst they hurriedly buzzed along the path to find her.
Apple Bloom had finally had enough trying to figure this out on her own and, remembering the conversations she would have with her sister, decided that surely there were other ponies with equally pertinent information on the matter. It was at this suggestion that Scootaloo began pushing the goal of talking to Rainbow Dash. It couldn’t hurt, thought Apple Bloom, but should she be the sole objective of our day?
The day had gone better than she expected as they continued running into pony after pony with interesting stories to tell about how they got their cutie mark. The governing theme to each of them being that these ponies came to the sudden realization that they had been going about their lives in the wrong direction and once something significant had pointed them the right way like a great mystical compass, they found their cutie marks had appeared. Each story was fascinating to Apple Bloom for different reasons, but they all had the same moral in the end. It was admitting to yourself, or simply realizing, that you liked to do a particular something that didn’t necessarily mesh up with the desires of your family or friends that might just lead to her salvation.
Still, she couldn’t help noticing Scootaloo’s increasing irritation with each telling that didn’t come from Rainbow Dash, each time a new story threatened to grace their ears she became increasingly unhappy. She was a bit too lost in the details of the individual stories, carefully sorting information into easily manageable pros and cons that she could, later on, decide how to use.
Scootaloo didn’t seem to latch on to words too much, even once going so far as to scream while in Rarity’s boutique, dismissing exactly the message that Apple Bloom had found herself becoming so interested in. Even as the trio continued their mission across town, consistently stopping to listen to another pony’s tale in increasingly difficult to understand ways, Apple Bloom kept her mind trained on the matter of honesty and desire with regards to her cutie mark. She had always considered such a thing a badge of honor, and sometimes looking at those on other ponies didn’t offer a great deal in the way of understanding of their special talents. It was now that she was beginning to realize that they didn’t so much represent special talents as they did a heart’s strength.
Scootaloo, all the while, was becoming more belligerent and less enthusiastic about the outcome of this mission. It seemed like they might run into every pony in Ponyville before they ever found Rainbow Dash. Apple Bloom started feeling sorry for her, after all, if she had gotten to hear her own sister’s story, and Sweetie Belle got to hear Rarity’s, then it was only fair that Scootaloo got to hear her own hero’s story. She couldn’t have found the words to tell Pinkie Pie if that weren’t the truth.
• • •
“Hi Apple Bloom!” came a cheery voice from Sweetie Belle, who was in turn met only by a very serious gaze.
“Um… Hi?” offered Scootaloo, not sure why Apple Bloom looked so serious and, she noted internally, unsure if she wanted to tread on her hooves to find out.
“Hey Gals,” she said with a false sweetness in her drawl that echoed throughout the clubhouse until nopony could mistake the words for sincerity.
“What’s wrong?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“You are,” she replied, a sudden sharp rise in her tone indicated a lot of unaddressed anger and doubt threatening to burst through the dam and overtake the conversation at any moment.
“Me?” she whimpered back.
“Both of ya.” She suddenly found herself caught up in her own determination to get this out.
Sweetie Belle was always the fragile one of the group. She was very shy, which was tragic for a pony with such an amazing voice and talent with words. Apple Bloom felt that if she ever found the courage to get on a stage and sing any one of her many songs, she’d be very happy with the results. It would also help, felt the yellow earth filly, if Sweetie stopped trying to follow in her sister’s hoofsteps. Although the unicorn had a family, her relationship with her sister was not the greatest she had ever seen. Hopefully that might change someday, but right now it was one of those things that weighed her down. It took her by surprise to hear her friend speak so accusatorially. So much so that tears began welling in her eyes and she felt herself start to shake. She had enough trouble feeling wanted by her sister; she didn’t want her friends to dislike her.
“Sweetie Belle, are you o-” Scootaloo didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence before Sweetie Belle had galloped out of the clubhouse. She felt a fire in her veins at the sight of her friend running from the clubhouse on her long slender legs, and of the tears streaming through the air behind her as she did. At this, she rounded on Apple Bloom with unmistakable anger there in her violet eyes.
“What was that about?!” she nearly screamed, “How could you do that to her?!”
Apple Bloom didn’t even try to feign interest in what the orange pegasus said at that moment, although that wasn’t to say she didn’t care. She was just too focused on the conversation she intended to have. The conversation she knew deep down inside that she needed to have.
“Actually, Ah really want to talk to you,” she said, as calm and collected as she could manage. It was actually pretty convincing for how little practice she had at it.
“What…?” was the only response Scootaloo could think of at that point, completely caught off guard and unprepared for a direct confrontation or to have her anger dismissed. She was more than prepared to stand up for Sweetie Belle against this obnoxious new Apple Bloom, but not to be attacked herself.
“Scootaloo… Why don’t ya want us to get our cutie marks?”
Nothing she could have done could have prepared her for that question. She hadn’t realized she was doing it, but right then as she was forced to look at herself in the same light that Apple Bloom was she had no choice but to acknowledge just how disastrous her ideas often were. Okay, so now that that was settled she just had to figure out why she was doing it.
“What?!” she sputtered out. Her mind was moving way too fast, too much anger, and too much fear was washing over her like ice water on a winter night, this conversation was not one she could have ever been prepared to have.
• • •
She’d been following the yellow earth filly around for most of the day after school had let out. She watched cautiously as she tried to sell apples in the square, and made a mess of it while she was at it. Scootaloo had to admit to herself that it was amusing to watch, even as she heard the orange earth mare yell at Apple Bloom.
She had picked up her name in class and, more importantly, that she was a blank flank too. She’d witnessed the taunting of those snobby little grey and purple earth ponies, and she’d seen how it got under Apple Bloom’s skin, even if the filly didn’t show the full extent of the damage on first glance.
It was all she could do not to burst through the bushes and approach her for friendship right then and there, but she was more than a little worried about how that might look. So, instead, she continued to follow the filly with the pink bow in her mane around town and observe her. She was more curious to see whether or not Apple Bloom actually managed to get her cutie mark in the small amount of time they had to prepare for the upcoming cute-ceañara.
Now there was a thought that filled her with dread, that cute-ceañara was the last place she wanted to be. It wasn’t that it was meant to celebrate the accomplishment of a filly she didn’t particularly care for, and it wasn’t that it celebrated something she had yet to accomplish. It was that she’d be alone in going there, and she didn’t want that at all. It didn’t matter if she had her cutie mark or not, although she definitely would prefer to show up with it than without. No, the truth was she didn’t want to be alone for any reason, and that was what she was all the time.
She knew that this pink-bowed filly could easily be a good friend, but she had yet to work up the nerve to speak to her. So, now here she was continuing to spy on Apple Bloom as she approached the door of a rather colorful house and awaited a response. She had overheard enough of the conversation between the yellow filly and her orange sister to know that she was here to invite her friend to accompany her to the party. She knew that Apple Bloom was doing this to avoid going along as the only blank flank there.
It was, therefore, a tremendous shock indeed to see Twist step outside and display her flank proudly, yet so hesitantly. It took the wind right out of her, true, but it also gave her an idea. A particularly rare courage that told her she could offer to go with Apple Bloom instead. She began to gather up her wits and prepared to take her first step out of her hiding place when she heard two familiar voices speaking steadily but with intention.
She stared in shock, watching as those obnoxious grey and pink fillies trotted off and left a very dejected looking Apple Bloom behind. It hurt her, but she found she was no longer possessed of the courage to approach the yellow filly, and she instead chose to run. She didn’t know why she did, and she never stopped asking herself about it.
• • •
She was pacing, just pacing. Moving back and forth across the clubhouse like she had forgotten what the floor boards looked like at each end and needed to refresh her memory. She had noticed that they all seemed just a bit further from her gaze than they did the first time they had occupied the tree house. It was unnerving, but she was determined enough to have this talk right here and now to overlook the change in perspective.
“Okay…,” she finally said, breaking through the silence that was only given rest by the gentle clip clop of her own hooves pacing the clubhouse. She turned to face Apple Bloom, because no matter how angry or mean the yellow filly was determined to be, she wasn’t going to get the best of Scootaloo.
“How is Twist?” she asked, her voice was calm and filled with purpose. She had confidence that Apple Bloom never knew about, and it was impressive to say the least.
She was caught entirely off guard by the question. What relevance did that even have?
“What…?” she asked, feeling her resolve faltering as the conversation shifted around on her.
“I said ‘How is Twist?’” she repeated as she took a seat on her haunches.
Apple Bloom had honestly not paid Twist much attention since the Cutie Mark Crusaders had been formed. Twist had made some attempts at reconnecting with her long-time friend, but it was usually met with awkward silence from the yellow filly. Now that her pegasus friend brought it up, she had little choice but to focus and try to remember even a miniscule detail that would give her an answer. She wracked her mind for only a minute before she resigned to her ignorance. It had been too long since she’d spoken to Twist for her to know.
“Ah… Ah don’t really know.”
“I know you don’t… Why don’t you know?”
“Um… well…”
“Apple Bloom… You haven’t spoken to her in like a year. Not more than three words since that cute-ceañera…,” she said, her voice had softened during the course of her sentence and Apple Bloom felt reassured by this shift.
“Ah… um…”
“But, why? Why don’t you talk to her anymore?” she asked.
“Um…”
Scootaloo had, unbeknownst even to herself, practiced this talk ever since she and the others formed the Cutie Mark Crusaders. It was something she had secretly tucked away deep inside and refused to acknowledge, she never liked fear and this particular fear was so much closer to her than that of some dangerous attempt at gaining a cutie mark. It was a fear of getting that cutie mark, a fear she had grown a little resentful of, but she was secretly relieved every time her flank turned up blank at the end of one of their wonderful adventures.
“Apple Bloom… ever since Twist got her cutie mark… you’ve drifted away from her…,” she continued, not wanting to let Apple Bloom fill up the silence with more fumbling, “and when I saw that… when… when I still see that… it scares me…”
“And not just me, it’s Sweetie Belle too. She sees it; she sees what happened when Twist finally discovered her super-special talent and got her cutie mark. We both saw it… she lost you.”
Apple Bloom blinked, and stared at Scootaloo in a haze of thought. All of her words were hovering around her head, each one threatening to smack her in the face time and again with an unnerving truth about who she had become.
Scootaloo sighed, her resolve to face Apple Bloom had waned and suddenly she didn’t want to see her friend’s eyes as she carried on. The window seemed much more inviting, so she gazed out of it. A breeze caught her mane and blew it into her eyes. She still couldn’t get used to the length of it, and found herself having to adjust it more and more often. It still stayed pretty tame beneath her helmet, which certainly counted for something in her mind.
“If you drift away… You have a family that you’re really close with. Think about that… okay? You have that to go back to. Sweetie Belle isn’t so close to her family… They don’t really get her all that well, her parents just kind of… play along with whatever she’s doing, they aren’t real honest with her. And I don’t know if you noticed this… but she really wants to be as close to her sister as you are to yours…”
• • •
The Carousel Boutique was a mess, everything that could be askew happened to be exactly as askew as it needed to be to throw its proprietor into full on stress mode. She was so rapidly moving from one end of the building to the next frantically searching for supplies and tools as she planned out the best way to arrange her work and get through it quickly that she didn’t register as anything but a blur to her little sister.
Such a display was lost on the orange pegasus filly who peered inside waiting for the hysterics to quiet down before she and Apple Bloom could actually enter. Truthfully, although she had seen the condition of the fashionista without much difficulty, that was never the center of her focus. She’d been watching the little white unicorn filly with the pink and purple mane as she fruitlessly offered her assistance to her older sister; only to be rejected time and again, with each rejection dropping her enthusiasm significantly.
Scootaloo silently wondered what it would be like to have her own older sister, but more than that, she noticed how dismissive Sweetie’s actual sister was to her. It bothered her, although she’d never say that out loud and she’d be unlikely to ever find the right time to discuss it with the unicorn filly in private.
It didn’t seem fair to have family if family didn’t care enough to notice you reaching out and trying to give a helping hoof. It bothered her, but she pressed it deep into her heart and let it fade away there. She had almost wanted to be envious of her friend, but she couldn’t find herself wanting a family badly enough to accept that sort of dismissal to have it.
• • •
She felt her eyes starting to burn as Scootaloo kept up her pace. It was so strange to hear such soft honesty from her; she was more prone to small bouts of blunt honesty that rang of some level of naiveté. This was pure, untarnished honesty, it showed no signs of stopping and she couldn’t understand how her friend could have all of this inside of her.
“Scootaloo… how do you see that…?” she asked. It was a miracle to her that those words weren’t forced through tears.
• • •
It was her worst nightmare fast coming into reality and threatening to destroy everything she held dear. The fighting had begun even before they boarded the train for Canterlot, and it had persisted throughout their journey on the rails. She was desperate to quell the aggression and get back to being peaceable friends like they always had been.
She could never explain how the fighting had begun, and that was what worried her the most. It just sort of came out of nowhere and that didn’t make any sense to her. How did a fight have any right to just, without prompt, suddenly start rampaging all over their friendship? She just wanted all of that to end, and to have fun with her friends on this field trip.
After all, it wasn’t every day that they got to go to Canterlot or spend time together so closely during school hours. She was reasonably sure that neither Diamond Tiara nor Silver Spoon could do anything to damper the spirits of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. She was, at least, correct in that assumption. She just didn’t realize that their intervention wouldn’t even be necessary to have a negative effect on what she thought was going to be a pretty cool day.
She just didn’t understand why things had to be this way. She hoped that Canterlot would somehow help to diffuse their growing tension and bring them back to the laughter she had grown so fond of. Scootaloo already knew that depending on that alone wouldn’t really work out, so she had resolved to take some action in the form of inserting humor where possible in an effort to cool off already flaring tempers. She had to act quickly, because she was beginning to feel some of the frustration herself.
The walk through Canterlot’s garden wasn’t bad or negative, or at least it didn’t feel like it should have been. The scenery wasn’t bad to look at, especially the statues. She thought she heard Cheerilee mention something about one of the statues, and that was when her eyes met with the mare holding the orange flag with yellow stars. She marveled at it briefly before she realized how she might make her friends laugh.
It was a decidedly unsuccessful attempt at being funny, and it ended with Apple Bloom putting her down, followed by Sweetie commenting on the yellow filly’s use of a fake word, and Scootaloo herself trying one more time to inject humor to maybe lighten their moods.
After all that effort, which she would later admit had been very little, she felt herself growing more frustrated and unable to quiet her temper as the day continued. She had a feeling it was just going to get worse, she just didn’t know how that was possible.
• • •
The clubhouse was silent for what seemed like forever as Scootaloo delayed her response. It wasn’t her favorite topic of discussion, and she was glad it had never come up earlier in their friendship. It was here now though and she couldn’t ignore it. If she started lying now then it would taint everything she had already said, and she couldn’t very well sit there and have an honest soul searching conversation about the values of her friendships while she chose to ignore those with a huge lie.
“Well… I guess… you watch other families closer… when you don’t have one of your own…,” she said quietly. The words came out so weak and so strained that it wouldn’t have surprised her if they didn’t reach Apple Bloom’s ears.
For Apple Bloom, amidst all of these revelations, it was suddenly very difficult to imagine having the conversation she wanted to have with her friends.
“You girls are all I have… and I can’t lose either of you… so… if that means going the rest of my life with a blank flank… then that’s just how it will have to be…,” she choked out. She promptly followed that up by avoiding eye contact with Apple Bloom. It was clear that the steel with which Scootaloo had initially presented herself had given out under strain, and was replaced with a soft and vulnerable blubbering mass of emotions. She wasn’t used to it; the sappy stuff just didn’t suit her.
• • •
Sweetie didn’t run very far from the clubhouse, despite herself. It would have been very easy to keep running until she reached the Boutique, but then she didn’t know how to talk to her sister about things like this. It wasn’t the same kind of relationship Apple Bloom had with her own sister, it was strained at the best of times. It made her feel a bit jealous, but then seeing how Apple Bloom and Applejack often worked together usually gave her hope that she could somehow fix her relationship with her own sister.
The shade of the apple tree she was sitting under wasn’t nearly as inviting as it appeared to be. Mostly because it was lonesome at this moment in time and she was still drying her eyes, and she wasn’t sure what was going to happen to her friends. It took some concentration and strain, but she was able to use her magic to pluck an apple from the tree. It was unfortunate that she didn’t have the appetite to actually take a bite out of it. Still, practice was always good and focusing on something academic was one of Twilight’s earliest lessons to her. Unfortunately it didn’t distract her as much as she would have liked, and she found her thoughts still lingering on her friends. She couldn’t stand the thought of losing either of them. It truly made life a lot easier when she was able to spend some of it with them having crazy adventures and trying to reach the same goal as her friends. The Crusaders were never in competition though, it was always a team effort and that was the most important part of it to her. She really didn’t have that with her family, since her parents just sort of patronized her, and her sister was not a great deal more improved in her own attitude.
She didn’t want to lose this; it was the only thing actually getting her through. It didn’t matter to her if she ever got her cutie mark because the Crusaders made her plenty happy. In fact, her reason for searching as hard as she was for her cutie mark was that Apple Bloom so desperately wanted hers. It sort of hurt her to see how important that was, especially when she and Scootaloo talked about it. It was hard for them to believe, but they both came to the same conclusion: her cutie mark was more important than her friends.
She hated to think like that about either of her friends because it just seemed unnatural to have such ill ideas about them. Now, she was struggling to silence the words that were making it so hard to breathe. She heard Apple Bloom tell her she was wrong, not that she was mistaken about something she had said, not that she answered a question on one of Cheerilee’s tests wrong, no, that she was wrong. As though, somehow, her existence was a mistake that needed to be corrected.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying harder and harder to stop those words. It was starting to feel hopeless, when she heard a familiar voice break her concentration and force her heart to jam into high gear at the same time. She was, in fact, hearing her very own voice.
No, don’t let her call you that. Don’t let her think that about you. Tell her you aren’t wrong. Tell her she’s wrong. She has to be able to see that she was wrong to say that!
She gazed over the seemingly boundless orchards, for the moment taking in the sheer overwhelming number of trees that had to be bucked in a single season. The size of the task was very large, but she realized that it got done each year right on time. If something like that could get done like clockwork every year, then a lot of other things must be possible too. Right now, the one thing that mattered was at the front of her mind, echoing self doubt that seemed to no longer have any effect on her.
• • •
Wordlessly she trotted over to Scootaloo and sat next to her, cautiously nuzzling her friend with the top of her head.
“I’m sorry, Scootaloo…,” she said softly. There was no need to overweigh it with pointless additional words that might take away from what she really meant. She was sorry.
Scootaloo closed her eyes to stifle tears, and she felt warmth rush through her as Apple Bloom nuzzled her. “I’m sorry too, Apple Bloom… I just… I’m scared…”
“Scootaloo… Ah’m not goin’ anywhere…,” she said softly. The country warmth had fully returned to her voice now, and Scootaloo found comfort in that.
“Apple Bloom!” another voice, sweet and melodic but shaded with anger, cried out from the door, causing Apple Bloom to turn and see Sweetie Belle standing there looking ready for a fight. It had been a long time since the unicorn’s voice squeaked awkwardly during any length of conversation, so to hear her own name in Sweetie’s voice crack as it did told her how much emotion there was underneath.
‘No, please… Don’t fight…,’ thought Scootaloo.
“Sweetie Belle…” she said, turning her whole body to face her, “ah’m s-“
Sweetie Belle’s eyes pleaded with Apple Bloom to understand what she was about to say. The olive green orbs shimmered in the morning light in a way that Apple Bloom had never seen before. There was real hurt and doubt in those eyes and they wanted, no, needed answers.
“I’m… I’m not wrong! Apple Bloom, that was a terrible thing of you to say… I’m not…,” she seemed not to have any idea where to take this, tripping over herself and teetering on the edge of incoherence as she fought to keep her thoughts straight, “I can do stuff right! I know I can! I don’t know what I did wrong!”
“Nothin’…,” said Apple Bloom, mercifully interrupting the blubbering unicorn. It was difficult to face what she had done to her friends, and she was beginning to hate herself more each minute for it. “You didn’t do anythin’ Sweetie Belle… Ah’m sorry.”
‘Oh Thank Celestia…,’ thought Scootaloo while breathing an unnoticed sigh of relief.
Scootaloo hadn’t moved from her spot, still gazing out the window while listening to her friends resolving their differences. She couldn’t relax though, even at the sound of peace returning to the Crusaders. She had let go of her deepest darkest secret and now she was waiting to see what that would lead to.
“Scootaloo talked to me,” she said, “and she made me realize ah I was wrong,” she added, not even hinting at the actual depth of the conversation that had taken place.
Scootaloo felt her ears perk up, not looking back but still listening carefully. Apple Bloom hadn’t betrayed her secret, even a little, to Sweetie Belle. She wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about it, and it seemed to produce a mixture of relief and disappointment that just left the little orange pegasus confused.
“I’m really sorry, Sweetie Belle,” she said again, as though the idea she were trying to emphasize wasn’t apparent.
• • •
The crusades of the day were the most fun they had ever had in their time together as friends. For once, Scootaloo experienced no real fear going into suggestions about cutie marks. She had no problem with the idea that any of them might get one, and it no longer felt like that might be the end of the world.
It might have made the day easier to get through, but as usual her nights were the real challenge in her life. She often had to find shelter and food on her own, and the repairs to the clubhouse had been a blessing in disguise. It offered her a place to stay at night, and to get out of the weather. She preferred the rolling hills one could observe the stars from, it gave her a nice view of the sky and she would spend time dreaming about what it would be like to actually be up there. Especially with a particular rainbow maned pegasus.
Tonight was not going to be one of those, as the clouds were brought into position by the weather team and a night of rain was announced. The clubhouse was fast becoming her new home, and she was grateful for it. Apple Bloom had really done a good job of fixing it up, and she remembered being scared to point that out to her. She supposed it wouldn’t be so bad if she did that now, especially pointing out how well the yellow filly maintained the clubhouse since they had first started using it.
She finally arrived at the clubhouse in time to only feel the first few stray rain drops before she got inside. The rain picked up quickly, pelting the roof in a concert of thousands of drums. The noise was near deafening, but she had gotten quite used to it by now.
“Scootaloo?”
She almost jumped right out of her skin as she spun around to meet eyes with Apple Bloom. She was screaming at her heart to slow down and let her breathe.
“Ah thought ya’d be here…,” she said quietly, “Ah saw ya… ya got ta the edge of the farm… and then ya turned and walked against the fence until you were out of sight… and Ah had a feeling ya were goin’ to be here…”
“What are you doing here?!” she blasted back at her friend, suddenly feeling her anger rising.
Another voice, a little smaller but no less familiar to her, spoke from the darkness behind Apple Bloom.
“We didn’t want you to be alone,” said Sweetie Belle, who was remarkably calm in stark contrast what she was like earlier.
She only felt anger, boiling up through her neck and into her mane as she concluded that Apple Bloom must have betrayed her secret after all. She thought about feeling relieved, but at the same time all she could respond to was the sudden terrible fear that gripped her heart and shook it violently.
“Apple Bloom! How could you tell her?!” she heard herself screaming, yet she could not recall instructing her mouth to do so.
“Huh?” squeaked Sweetie Belle, “tell me what?”
All at once she deflated from anger to confusion. There was nothing about that question that made any sense at all. She was here, with Apple Bloom, and she didn’t know what Scootaloo’s secret was?
“Ah wouldn’t do that Scootaloo…,” Apple Bloom said sadly. Of course she really only blamed herself, because she had just earlier come to realize what a terrible friend she had been.
“I’m sorry Apple Bloom… I’m so sorry!” she cried out, suddenly feeling a whole new kind of fear grip her heart.
“It’s okay Scootaloo,” she replied. The sincerity in her voice was unmistakable, and she needed it to be just that. Scootaloo had to know that she really cared, and really wanted to stay friends. She just had to.
“What’s going on?” asked Sweetie Belle, suddenly realizing she was on the outer edge of the loop that had formed between Apple Bloom and Scootaloo.
Scootaloo’s eyes pleaded to Apple Bloom until she was struck with the hypocrisy of what she was asking for. She wanted to keep her friends, but she didn’t want to tell truth again. Foalish.
“Sweetie Belle…,” she began her conversation with just her friend’s name. It carried into the details of what she had discussed earlier that day, with Apple Bloom. She told her of how she stood up for her, and for herself, by admitting the truth. Sweetie Belle had to admit that such a fear had always nagged her somehow, that she would not be able to keep her friends once their united mission was concluded.
The rest of the night faded into the warmth of their friendship, and blocked out all sense of the outside world. Finally, their friendship was not based on fear or desperation, but on an actual understanding of each other. None of them had seen this coming, but they were all very grateful.
In unison they spoke, quietly against the backdrop of the rain and darkness.
Cutie Mark Crusaders, Best Friends Forever!
Yay!
My Little Pony and all characters are the intellectual property of Hasbro, Hub, and Lauren Faust. I'm jealous.
Author's Notes:
Thank you to the Pre-Readers without whom this fic would be far lesser work.
To Keeria, as well as the Pre-Readers, for pointing out the flaws in this story and helping me to better it.
To EQD for featuring my story!
And finally, but most importantly, to the readers! Thank you all!
