"Sorry."
The word pierced my heart as I watched her turn, pausing only to look at me one final time with those big, bright, beautiful sapphire blue eyes. She was biting her lip, and I could tell what she was thinking. If she left now, we'd never speak again. And then she turned.
As she walked away, I couldn't help but stare at her. From her flawlessly styled mane that sat upon her perfectly proportioned head and flowed down to almost knee height, to her locked ebony box cutie mark that was visible on her well toned flank and swayed side to side slowly in time with her movements.
I had always wondered why her cutie mark was a box. She had always said it was a jewelry box, after all, creating beautiful pieces of art that hung around the necks or ankles of many of the ponies in town was her special talent. But now I knew the truth. It was Pandora's Box.
With each passing second she got further and further away, and here I was, standing like in the middle of the street with my mouth hanging open like a village idiot. I so desperately wanted to call her back and say something, anything, if it had the chance to win her back. But what could I say? She had made her choice and I knew from experience there was nothing I could do to change it. Even if that choice was to cut me from her life like a surgeon cuts a tumor from his patient.
Slowly tears began to form, their presence confusing and painful as my eyes began to sting. Why was this happening? Why was I standing in the street as my best friend, and even if I told her I'd moved on, love of my life walked away? And then I remembered.
Him!
I forced my eyes away from her form and down the street. There he was, standing in the middle of the street, with a smug plastered across his face as he looked on in all too obvious glee at events that had taken place. How dare he?!
How dare he be happy while I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest and presented before me?!
Then again, I couldn't be surprised. He had been trouble since the moment she had met him.
It had started last summer, just after I'd moved to Stalliongrad to do a years apprenticeship, studying how to design, construct and maintain steam engines. Her and I had spent a lot of time together in that break between studies, much of it discussing the future of our relationship. By that point we'd been good 'friends' for two years, flirted almost constantly and had even declared our love for each other.
Despite our feelings for each other we decided that it would be best to wait. Stalliongrad was a long way from Ponyville, according to the local postmare letters could even sometimes take a couple of weeks to travel between the two locations, and we believed it would be best to stay 'friends' in these conditions. Besides, we both agreed we could always get together after I returned from my studies.
So the end of the summer came and I packed up my belongings, said goodbye to: hearth, home, friends and family and set off to the great cold north. Meanwhile, because she was a couple of years younger than me, she returned to her schooling here in Ponyville.
By the end of the first week of studies I was completely spent. Stalliongrad was pretty much a blank, featureless city filled with blank, featureless ponies and a week learning how to care for steam engines under extremely cold conditions in literal extremely cold conditions had left me exhausted, frustrated and on the verge of jumping in front of one of said steam engines.
I was near the end of my tether and just when I thought that coming up here to study had been the wrong choice I opened the door to my student flat and there, lying on the floor was just the tonic I needed. It was a letter. Just a plain white envelope with nothing seemingly special about it, but when I picked it up, flipped it over and saw my name written on the front I instantly identified her hoofwriting.
Just the mere sight of her hoofwriting there on that plain white front seemed the shake away my fatigue, push away the cold and fill my heart with butterflies. Wasting no time at all I rushed further into the flat, parked my flank in my old, large, battered leather chair - something that had made my skin crawl when I first saw it on arrival - and tore the envelope clean open. Carefully, I pulled the letter from its confines and laid it out on my lap, unfolding it up to read.
The letter was short and sweet, apparently she had sent it after just the first day back at school (explaining why I had already got it), and had had a rather rough day. At the time I didn't think anything of it, but in between the various and many 'I love you's and 'I miss you's she had mentioned how she had made this new friend. Apparently she'd slipped up in the school corridor and had dropped her books everywhere and he'd been there to help her get back on her hooves and pick up her books.
Maybe if I'd taken action then none of this would have happened. But that would have made me a jealous, untrusting tool who wouldn't have deserved her anyway.
But that letter was only the start.
Over the year I continued to get letters from, each one a cherished item I stored in a draw to read on a particularly bad day, something I hoped she'd been doing with the letters I'd been sending in time. But, if I were to go back and reread each letter right now I was certain I would see her write less 'I love you' or 'I miss you' and more about the guy.
I really should have seen it coming. Especially when the last letter she sent me before the end of the year's study mentioned she had news to tell me but it was too big to just write. But, ever the optimist, I had hoped it was that she was 100 percent ready to commit to a relationship on my return to town. Something I'd been dreaming about all year (not to the discredit of Stalliongrad mares, they were lovely but my heart had already been taken).
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
The return to town was accompanied by something of a fanfare, apparently Pinkie Pie, an Element of Harmony and the worlds best party planner, had hit a party dry spell and had seen my arrival as excuse to go all out. Now, normally I'm not one for being the center of attention, but I appreciated the gesture. Besides, Ponyville is home to the best bakers in Equestria (at least in my opinion) and after the severe amount of stew they fed us in Stalliongrad I was desperate for some cake.
It was just after Pinkie Pie had dragged me on stage, sat me in a spotlight and leaving me nervous while I was publically congratulated by what I think was the whole town that 'she' found me and told me her news.
I had just come down from the stage, sweat from a mixture of nerves and heat from the spotlight pouring down my muzzle, when I felt a small tap on shoulder. As I turned round and saw her, I felt my heart skip a beat, she was beautiful.
By this time it was early evening, and behind her the sky was speckled with the first stars of the night. I could tell she had grown a bit in the previous year, her figure no longer as chubby as she had once been and she had filled out incredibly nicely, curves in all the right places. She was also wearing a stunning dress, not an area I know much about but it accentuated her body perfect and the deep ocean blue of the fabric really brought out the colour in her eyes. It looked expensive and I was almost certain it was a custom work of the town's most famous seamstress, also a element of haromy, Miss Rarity. So stunned by the beauty that stood before me, I barely noticed when she began to speak.
"H-hi Whirring," she stuttered. "H-how was your t-trip?" As she spoke I noticed that she was struggling to maintain eye contact, focusing instead her gaze on an anklet she wore on her left foreleg and was fidgeting with with her right foreleg. The usual sparkle that was usually present in her eyes when she talked to me was also missing.
"It was cold, wet and long." I replied. I don't know why, but something about her demeanor made giving a long and detailed answer feel wrong.
"S-sounds pretty t-tiring," she said, her voice sounded rather hollow and far, as if this conversation was something she'd rather not be happening. Strange since she was the one who'd tapped me on the shoulder.
"Yeah, it was I guess," I said. By this point I was getting a more than a little frustrated. I had no idea what was wrong with her, but I had spent a whole year dreaming about seeing her again and here she was, the mare I loved, more beautiful than I'd ever seen her before and she seemed like she didn't even want to be talking to me. I took a couple of steps forward, quickly closing the gap between us, and with my right forehoof lifted her head to gaze into her eyes. An act which made her go completely still.
"You know, I've really missed you." I said, never once allowing myself to break eye contact.
"Y-yeah, me t-too," she replied, her voice still sounding distant.
I couldn't take this, something was clearly wrong and I didn't know what to do. Given how distant she sounded I doubted she would just tell me. So I casted my mind back, trying to see if I could remember something from a letter that could give me a clue as to why she was being so distant. I found nothing.
The only thing I could remember was one of my favorite parts from the letter I read most often. A part in which she listed, in detail, what she was most looking forward to upon my return to town. Top of this list happened to be her 'near desperation' to 'eagerly enjoy' our 'first kiss in a year'. Since this was all I had to go on, I closed my eyes, pursed my lips and moved blindly moved my muzzle towards her.
I hit air, overbalanced myself and fell, headfirst, into the dirt.
"Spectacular!" I remember thinking to myself at the time.
As I opened my eyes and picked myself up off the dirt, I noticed that her eyes were filled with tears as she looked at me.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. It was the first, of which there would be many, time I heard her say those words.
"Sorry? What for?" I asked as I reached for one of her forehooves to comfort her. Even before my hoof made contact hers recoiled away.
"I-I'm sorry," she said once again. "T-this is w-wrong." By this point her face was matted with tears that flowed freely from her eyes, and given the way she was acting towards me I didn't feel far behind her.
"What? Why?" I half shouted. A few of the closer ponies looked round at us in response but I didn't really care. The mare I loved, the mare who had told me she had loved me, was acting almost like I was a stranger and telling me it was even wrong to try and comfort her.
Right now, that was all I cared about.
For several seconds she looked at me, uncertainty plastered quite obviously across her features as she considered what her reply would be. Then she spoke.
"Ihaveacoltfriend!" her words came out in a single blurted statement. Because of this, it took me a moment to break the words up, realisation hitting me like a sack of bricks as I understood the ramifications of her statement. I hoped beyond all hopes that I had simply misunderstood.
"A-as in a dating c-colt friend?" I asked, my voice wavering as I could barely bring myself to consider the possibility.
"Yes," she confirmed, her voice barely more than a whisper as she ran a hoof across her muzzle to wipe away the tears.
As I watched her actions and her words began to sink in all colour seemed to drain away from the world until everything seemed grey to me. Slowly, my legs began to buckle beneath me and soon I was on my knees in the dirt. I was heart broken.
No! Not broken, that was far too much of an understatement.
Shattered! That was a far more fitting word.
Tears began to matt the fur on my muzzle as I started to sob open and noisily. By now I could hear murmurs in the background as more ponies began to watch the spectacle of my heart being torn from my chest, being placed inside a blender and the setting set to purée.
The stares of ponies as I wept into the dirt clearly began to embarrass Precious, because the next thing I knew I felt one of her hooves gently touch me on my shoulder. Instinctively, I recoiled at the touch, it felt like a burning brand had been placed on my skin. How dare she think that a mere touch could be enough to calm my sorrows and end her public humiliation!
I'm not exactly sure what came over me, but the next thing I knew I had swatted her hoof away, not caring if I hurt her or not, and had lifted my eyes from the dirt, fixing my gaze on hers. It was what I saw in them that truly broke me.
Pity.
No remorse for what she had done. No shame at how her actions had caused me so much pain. No, it was pity. The mare I loved, who had declared her love for me and in doing so had captured my heart, considered me a pitiful creature that should be silenced so as to make her life easier.
I couldn't take it.
And so I fled.
To this day I still have no idea how I had found the strength to get clumsily to my hooves. Nor did I know how fast and how long I had run, how many kindly hooves I shook off in my efforts to escape. All I remember was that I ended up at the one place in the world that still held any chance of comfort to me. My home.
Remembering that I hadn't had time before the party to retrieve my keys from my parents, I hesitantly gave the door a test. It was unlocked, which was hardly surprising. After all, we lived in Ponyville, one of safest towns in all of Equestria. Ignoring the fact that all six of the elements of harmony happened to live here, everypony was nice and friendly. As a result pretty much everypony trusted each other and no one ever really felt the need to lock their doors. Though I presume some of those ponies who had migrated here from other parts of the Kingdom did so simply out of habit.
Crossing across the threshold and closing the door behind me I was instantly hit by the darkness. Outside, the streets were well lit by the many powerful street lanterns, but inside, all the lights were off. Some small part of me must have realized my parents were still at the party, but the rest of me didn't care. The moment the door was closed behind me I set off through the darkness, tears striking the wood underhoof.
Before long arrived at my room, the door was open and boxes of my belongings littered the floor. Some helpful pony had obviously brought my belongings here at the beginning of the party, maybe my Mum or Dad, but my mind didn't register them. All my mind wanted to do was slam the door shut, cross the room, jump onto my already made bed and bury my head into my pillow. So that's what I did.
The moment my head hit the pillow, the sound of the slammed door still resounding in my ears, the flood gates opened and tears began to flow profusely down my muzzle and soaking my pillow.
That night I cried more than I ever had in my entire life before. I cried until my mind, soul and body were numb. I cried until my eyes were red and my pillow was soaked through with my tears. I cried until I couldn't possibly cry any more. And then, in the early hours of morning, battered; bruised and broken (emotionally speaking), I fell asleep.
I awoke the next day to a retina scorching light which filled my room with an all too cheerful glow. Wincing in the bright light, I moved to sit up and get out of bed, strangely, I found my pillow following my head on it's ascent up from the mattress. Surprised to find my pillow stuck to my face, I wondered what could have happened last night, then it hit me like a sledgehammer. Or a thousand swords piercing my heart. Whichever hurts more.
As I sat and pondered on the night before, fresh tears forming in my eyes, a loud and rapid knocking on the front door brought me out of my stupor. Shaking my head and fighting back the tears I called out to my family.
"Mum? Dad? Door!" I called out, my voice croaking. It was then I realized just how sore my throat was.
There was no response to my calls, and as the knocking continued unanswered, I realized I was the only one in the house. My parents must have already gone to work.
'Just how late did I sleep in?' the thought floated through my mind.
With the knocking showing no signs of abating, and being the only pony in the house, I decided that I better answer the door. No matter how rotten I felt.
Slowly, I peeled the pillow off of my face, an experience that was far more disgusting that I thought I could have been. Once the pillow had been extracted, a quick look at its crusty surface made me vow to never cry again. A vow I would soon come to break.
Now pillow free, I made my way downstairs to the main hall. This took longer than usual, my legs threatening to give way beneath me with each step I took. Eventually, I reached the bottom of the stairs and turned my attention to the door. The knocking was loud now, almost headache inducing given my fragile state but I pushed through the discomfort and made my way to the door. My hoof shaking as I undid the lock.
Pulling the door open, I suddenly felt my ears press themselves flat against my head, my mouth drop open and I heard myself whimper slightly as I was greeted to the worst possible sight. There, standing in the bright sunlight, her forehooves playing with her anklet just like the night before and beautiful as always was her.
She greeted my gaze with a bashful smile, slightly biting her bottom lip as she did so.
"Um..." she said, clearly as uncomfortable as I was in this situation. "Would it be okay for me to come in?"
Her question sunk deep into my head as I considered the answer. 'Was I okay with letting her in?'
The first and most obvious answer that came to mind was clearly 'no'. She had shattered my heart just the night before, very publically might I add, and I was fully within my mind to turn her away and slam the door in her face. 'Wasn't I?'
And yet... As I considered giving this answer, it felt wrong even trying to form the words in my mouth. This was precious, the mare I had dedicated the last few years of my life to. If I closed my eyes, it was here I saw smiling back at me in my head. How could I possibly say no to her? But how could I just say yes?
I knew if I said yes, I would feel like I was giving her a free pass, saying that I was okay with what had happened last night. When clearly I wasn't. She had humiliated me in front of everypony and I refused to just tell her I was cool with that.
So, not seeing a good way to answer the question, I didn't. Instead I turned on the spot and, leaving the door open behind me, walked towards the living room.
The sounds of the door closing behind me and another set of hoofsteps keeping the beat with mine told me she had taken the open door as the answer she had been desiring.
A yes, but not one which just gave her a free pass.