My Baby Sister

On some mornings, Applejack caught herself waking up not in the bed that was meant for her. Rather, she would often fall asleep sitting by Apple Bloom’s side. She watched her little sister, made sure she was fine. Spike rolled his eyes, of course, but Twilight didn’t say anything.

But Twilight hardly ever looked at her. On some days, Applejack could get a greeting out of her. On others, she was simply ignored. Spike told her that that was how Twilight acted nowadays. She was busy, he told her, always had to think about tomorrow.

Applejack felt bad, because between Twilight and Apple Bloom, she needed to be with her sister. Twilight would understand, Twilight had somepony to take care of herself.

On some mornings, Applejack caught Spike reading a book on the stairs that led up to Twilight’ room. That place was now separated with a blanket, much like the windows were all boarded up and all the doors were always closed. Even though that was that, when she first caught him like that, she sat down with him.

“Apple Bloom’s still sleeping,” she remembered herself telling him.

He looked up and said; “Don’t worry. She’ll wake up and she’ll be as good as new.”

“She’ll want to start with potty training then,” she told him with a heavy sigh.

His mouth twisted, but he didn’t say anything. Applejack could read many things out of the way he looked, but decided that these were complicated matters. He was too young to understand.

“What’re you reading there anyway?”

“I’m just checking. It’s a book I’m writing, about all the stuff we did before the world got messed up.”

The way he looked at the book, the sort of smile he bore as he told her these words, the glint in his eyes, these were all things Applejack remembered. She remembered, because she still hadn’t apologized. What she had told him had been insensitive.

He was as approachable as always, of course, but she had messed up herself.

Applejack remembered Twilight coming down on the third day, complaining to Spike that she needed some medicine. He argued that what she needed was sleep, so she got loud.

How bad a friend was she, that she just left them there. Instead Applejack went away from the cellar, up to the one room she spent her days in. There, she always just looked at the ceiling or at the door. Somedays she thought about what she’d do with Apple Bloom once she woke up, other times she stared at the door and hoped that anypony else would come.

But as she heard two friends fight below, she instead walked to the stairs and sat down, taking the book that Spike was writing.

The filly flipped to the first page, remembering her mother sitting down with her, teaching her the letters. How vivid the memories were, but maybe they weren’t hers. She’d sat down with Apple Bloom and taught her, after all. A mother and a daughter, an older and a younger sister, sometimes Applejack couldn’t see the difference.

She read the first words of the book out loud. “The first thing I think of, when I walk out of that door is how we first walked in, actually. The library was old and dusty. All I could think about was how much work was needed to be done, while Twilight wouldn’t shut up about Nightmare Moon. I hadn’t really liked Canterlot and I doubted I would come to like Ponyville. Still don’t know whether it’s good or bad that I was wrong.”

And from there came a recollection. Spike detailed how he searched diamonds with Rarity, only to be beset by Diamond Dogs. Then he talked about Nightmare Moon, Discord, his times as a pet-sitter.

It was a jumbled mess to read, but Applejack didn’t care, because she remembered a lot of the things he wrote about. Some differently, some just the way he described them.

It had made her uncomfortable, actually, because she didn’t want to look at her reflection anymore and she needed to be in the now, where Apple Bloom needed her.

“She’ll be fine,” Spike told her on the fourth day, as he put on his jacket and his glasses. “You want me to try to get you and her something from your farmhold?”

She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous to go.”

His answer was a shrug. “I don’t think anything’s too dangerous for a friend.”

His expression had many ways it could be interpreted, but Applejack just saw his eagerness to help and picked him up on it.

He came back by the time the sky turned dark. Thunder roared up in the sky and rain drummed ever so softly against the windows. She almost got worried, almost went up the stairs to talk to Twilight, but then the door was thrown open and the chance was gone.

Applejack remembered the fifth morning, when she woke up with her stomach hurting, sheets soaked with blood and urine. At first, she hadn’t noticed the latter had happened, but Spike was immediately there for her.

He did away with her sheets, turned the mattress around, put new ones on. Not once did she hear him grumble and when he was done he told her to lie back down.

“Don’t worry, Twilight’s made medication for the ingestion system. It’ll stop the bleeding.”

“Will it happen to Apple Bloom?”

Spike looked at her for a moment, smiling lightly at her concern. He shook his head. “No, she’ll be fine. So instead of worrying about her, you should just lie down and get some rest.”

She nodded and did as he told her. Later he came with the medicine. She drank it and hated the bitter taste. Her mother always liked to add a spoonful of sugar to sweeten most medicines, but Spike clearly wasn’t of the same school as her.

On that night, the cellar felt much cooler than ever before. Even beneath the sheets, Applejack felt the cold biting at her. Not quite sure how to deal with it, she simply curled up and looked to the side, where Apple Bloom slept.

“I’ll be fine,” she told herself. “I’m not even in pain.”

Her stomach kept her from falling asleep, however.

Barely keeping her eyes up, she noticed how Spike crept into his bed. He’d snuck down the stairs like he was a cat. So quiet, so gentle. Yet it got her attention that nopony else came as the night progressed. That made her worry, because another friend was still here. Even though they hardly ever talked.

As the clock struck midnight, Applejack decided to defy her stomach and rose from her bed, creeping up the stairs at a glacial pace.

Every step was pain, every step made her think she was in hell. The filly kept on going, ignoring her tummy as best as she could. Maybe Twilight was upstairs, in trouble, afraid to come. Applejack had been useless until that point, so she needed to be there for her.

Quietly, she opened the door and looked out into the library’s main room.

The alicorn’s short mane was a wild mess, her eyes had dark rings under them. She sat on the stairs, writing in Spike’s book and never looked up.

“Twi?”

There came no answer and so Applejack simply lay down by the stairs and tried to keep close to her friend. Twilight ignored her, as she always did and stayed in her own little reality. Applejack, however, finally went to sleep despite the pain.

On the sixth day, Spike made her sit down on the bed and gave her a stern talking-to. She felt strangely small and could offer no objection. After all, she was ill and needed to stay in bed to get better.

He left her in bed, telling her to stay there, promising to bring her an apple if she was good. So she tried to be.

That day she stared at the ceiling of the cellar and the end of the stairs. Boredom was a hard mistress, however. Soon, she rolled around in her bed and pretended to fight monsters, to sneak through dark tunnels, to be a kid hiding from her mother during a game.

“Applejack,” Twilight said, interrupting her.

Applejack remembered how Twilight looked at her the way the doctors at the hospital did. There was a distance between them, one that she was sure she couldn’t breach. Yet it had been five days already and this was their sixth. They needed to talk at some point.

“You look tired, Twi.”

“Hm. …”

“And your mane’s a mess. …”

“Hm. …”

As Twilight felt the brace, Applejack moved a hoof and touched her arm. “Twilight?” She asked and the alicorn looked up. “Why aren’t you talking to me?”

She blinked and then returned to make sure Applejack’s leg was alright. For a moment the filly feared the silence would come again, but Twilight opened her mouth and spoke words. “I’m sorry.”

And then the alicorn shook her head and let out a forced, sad laugh. “I’ve just got a lot going on. I mean, a lot has happened.”

The look in Twilight’s eyes could be interpreted as many things, but Applejack only saw how much she needed a friend to be with her.

“For me and Apple Bloom, too. She’s going to start with potty training once she wakes up,” she announced.

Of course, she was proud. Because she would help her little sister, because she was old enough to be the caretaker.

Twilight gave a half-hearted nod. “Yeah, Spike told me you had plans in that direction. I’d love to help, but I’ve still got a lot of work to do. You might’ve noticed that I’m mostly upstairs.”

That made Applejack wonder. “What’re you working on anyways, Twilight?”

She sighed, but then gave a playful shrug. “What do you think?”

Applejack rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out. The filly didn’t like quizzes like this, but since Twilight was a friend, she could humor her for a bit. So she thought. Twilight was a pony who mostly studied, so her work was probably related to that.

“School?” she asked.

Twilight grinned, then nodded. “Yes, you’re right. You got me on the first try. Is my life really nothing else to you?”

Applejack laughed. “I don’t know. You’re the type who overdoes it with homework.”

“Unlike you, huh?”

Now the filly blushed, felt her brain race for an answer. “I’m just not going because Apple Bloom needs me.”

“Well, Spike told me you’re not only here because of Apple Bloom, but also because you’re worried about Granny Smith.”

“He told you that?” Applejack asked, shocked.

Twilight shrugged. “It’s not really a problem, I like having other ponies around. And if you’re here. …”

Applejack remembered her pulling out the papers, smiling softly as she did so. With any other pony, that smile would’ve looked dishonest, but not with Twilight. She truly wanted to help Applejack catch up with her homework.

“We’ll all help each other,” Twilight had told her. “The sky and the world may be broken, but we stick together. No matter the cost.”

This morning, Applejack had woken shivering and wet. Twilight had told her that it was just a phase, Spike still insisted on getting her waist size for “stuff”. Winter was coming, she was getting ill and wet her bed.

The knife she held cut into the red, water spilled from the tomato and hit her legs. She’d always been a mucky foal, but she really did try to keep it orderly. This was another pony’s kitchen, after all.

A small generator stood atop the refrigerator, beaming with purple light. How it generated energy, Applejack didn’t understand and Spike had simply told her that it was “alicorn magic”.

It kept the food fresh, so she didn’t complain. Instead, she moved to it and got out water. It had a brownish tinge to it and bits of dirt floated around it. Nopony cared, this was the best they could get and it was drinkable.

Spike told her the quality of the food still was as good as it was, because he could still find some good things out there. Soon it would get colder and then no more food would be found.

“The best we can do is to enjoy it as we can,” he had told her.

She placed pieces of salad and tomatoes on the loafs of bread. It was a simple breakfast, but she knew that it would make the others happy, still. She almost felt inclined to make another bread for Apple Bloom.

There was always one loaf left over, however. It was always the one she made extra for her baby sister. Applejack wanted to do nothing more than doubt. She wanted to doubt that her sister was going to wake up, wanted to worry how she might able to cope if she didn’t.

She couldn’t, however, because the thought of doing that already felt like an abyss beckoning her closer to the edge. She didn’t want to know what lay past it. So instead, she focused on the bread and went for an extra loaf. It would be a leftover in the end, but that was then and now she wouldn’t worry.

“Thith,” came the noise from behind her.

It was nothing more than a horrible, badly enunciated word, but one she understood immediately. The knife fell down as Applejack immediately let it go and turned away from the breads she prepared.

And there stood Apple Bloom. She was tiny and haggard. Bandages covered her body, the diaper was soaked and the mane was a mess. Her little binky almost bounced forward and backward in her mouth. Almost immediately, Applejack felt a need overcoming her.

And Apple Bloom felt the same, stumbling forward like a newborn babe, a smile on her face. Applejack couldn’t just let her walk the entire distance, she needed to give her sister a hug. So she took the path towards the doorway. One step, two steps, three steps and then she threw her arms around her sister and lifted the little one up.

Applejack remembered her mother smiling and the smell of apple cider in the air, as she lifted her up just like this. It was a fleeting moment, a thought of safety, a dream of home. What it wasn’t was reality.

What was reality, however, was the faint smell of apples, hiding well behind any other odor. Applejack didn’t care for them, because she felt Apple Bloom’s tiny arms clinging to her again. What little strength she had, she seemed to use it as much as she could.

“We’re ‘ere,” she heard her whisper.

“Yeah,” she answered, her voice so small.

They lingered and then they parted, only to hug each other again. Apple Bloom laughed at that.

“Spike’s here, too,” Applejack said.

“Yeah, he brought me tea and put Twilight to sleep.”

Applejack smiled. “She probably needs a rest. I got a good one while you were asleep.”

“You look like it,” the little one answered, looking over Applejack’s shoulder. “Is it breakfast?”

“Yup. Bread and water. It’s better than it sounds, though.”

Apple Bloom rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sure.”

Applejack couldn’t help but smile at that. Her sister was alive and seemed to be as cranky as before, which was a bigger plus than she might’ve imagined. “Well, it’s definitely sure. Just as sure as the fact that someone’s goin’ to get a change before breakfast.”

She wanted to make for the door, but Apple Bloom stopped her. “Wait!”

“What?”

“Uhm, it’s just. … I’m rather hungry,” she said, but looked like she was lying, maybe trying to cover something up. Applejack wondered what it was.

“You need help with the bread?” she asked nonetheless.

Apple Bloom blushed and gave a nod. Applejack looked to the door and then at her sister, but considering the diaper still looked like it would hold for a bit, she decided to indulge her sister.

She wanted to spend some time with her, after all. It had been a week since they’d last been together and just by way of looking at her, Applejack felt a bit happier, a bit less broken. As long as Apple Bloom was here, the rest of the world could turn onwards forever, she would be fine. They both would always be fine.

So she sat down with Apple Bloom and they began to break their fast, as messily as ever. It was quite different from eating alone, Applejack noticed. Apple Bloom really needed as much attention as possible. Every bite needed to be cut appropriately, given to her individually and then Applejack made sure she was chewing properly.

The filly had problems with the chewing part, but that was to be expected. During the week, Twilight had removed some of the teeth, said something about the rot becoming far too dangerous for the filly. There weren’t that many left and by the end of the year she might lose the rest.

One on hoof, that would mean Apple Bloom couldn’t really talk anymore, on the other it also meant that Applejack would be needed even more.

Looking at her sister eat, however, twisted her stomach. Why would she even think such dark thoughts? This was her sister, the one she sought to protect, not hurt. She needed to be there for her.

“You two seem to be liking the bread quiet a bit,” Spike noted as he entered the room and sat down opposite to the two of them. “You don’t mind if I join in?”

Both of them shook their heads and he gave a smile. “Awesome.”

Yet they huddled up closer together after a bit. It’d gotten colder and the library wasn’t really the most well heated place in Ponyville, that honor belonged to Cheerilee’s house. Since the three of them were at the former place right now, they decided that huddling up was the best solution for this problem.

It was a good breakfast, probably even because of that. For once in a long, long while, they were truly among friends again and nopony ever knocked on the door here. Everything was fine and for Applejack, the world was perfect.