“AJ, wait me up!”
Applejack looked behind to see Coloratura trotting towards her.
“Hey, Rara! What’s up?” asked with a bright smile.
Coloratura seemed to shy away from it for a second, but recovered swiftly, “I just wanted to talk to you for a minute…”
“Sure can, sugarcube,” answered Applejack, “Applebloom, why don’t you go with the girls a little while?”
“Okay, AJ!” Said Applebloom, nuzzling her sister, “Thanks for the show, Rara! It was really nice from you!”
Coloratura nodded and thanked Applebloom as she was leaving in a seemingly random direction, “would you mind getting somewhere… quieter?” She pointed with a hoof towards the closest border of the town, nearing the Everfree.
Applejack thought for just a second, “Let’s go, Rara” They started heading off without another word, and AJ could feel something like a sigh escaping her friend’s lips.
When they reached the spot, they simply took seat and stared at each other for a moment.
But it didn’t last, as Rara cut it before awkwardness took hold.
“Thank you, Applejack,” started, “I… I guess I never truly saw what Sven had… Become? Or what he was from the start?” she trailed off for an instant.
“Ah can’t say that everything went exactly as plan’d… But I guess it all worked out in the end, didn’t it?” Applejack looked straight into Coloratura’s eyes, taking her back to the conversation.
Rara simply blinked before smiling, “of course it worked, AJ,” She rested her hoof on Applejack’s shoulder, “It’s just that…” She took her hoof back and bit her lip.
Applejack frowned a little, “what’s wrong?” Now it was Applejack’s turn to lend a hoof.
Coloratura sighed.
Applejack’s frown deepened. “Did he-”
“All my life’s been scripted” Coloratura cut her off. “Or at least that’s how it feels…” Before she could stop herself, she let that part of her concerns to roam free “It’s like he’s been pulling all the strings from the people I knew, from the ones I thought I knew…” She sighed again, “from the ones I worked for…” Her ears drooped to her skull, “From me…”
Applejack was taken aback by that.
“I don’t-” Coloratura took a sharp breath. “I don’t remember how to-” Her head dropped right then. “How to be me again”
With Coloratura at the very verge of tears, Applejack snapped back to the task at hoof.
“Rara,” Shoot, here goes nothing, thought as Rara looked slightly up, “You sang your soul out there for the first time in Celestia knows how long”
Coloratura turned her head up, though her ears were still down.
“I get you if you say that you are confused, or scared, or even at…” How would Rarity put it? “At a loss of what to do; but you have to believe in yourself just as I believed in you to sing true to yourself or how you believed in me when I told you about that Steven-pony”
“Steven?” Asked a more cheery Coloratura “Don’t you mean Sven?”
Applejack put a hoof to her chin “Umm…” she left a space as if to think “Yeah, I guess” she shot a smile to her friend. “What I’m trying to tell is that you don’t have to pay attention to that evil voice that tells you that you don’t know what to do; you just have to start to remember.
“You just had a really… Life changing concert back there, but I’m sure that you’ll be able to get yourself out of this hard patch and become a better pony because of it.”
Coloratura wasn’t at her best, but her mood seemed to be improving.
She simply laid herself down, “I think I just need to rest this one out, AJ…” she rested her chin on her forehooves, still looking quite down. “But… I think I’ll try to stop by Ponyville a little more often, don’t you think?”
Applejack tipped her hat. “Sure thing, popstar,” She moved besides Rara and rested herself there.
Coloratura nuzzled a little against Applejack. “Thanks for making me see, AJ,” She lifted her head to look straight into Applejack’s eyes. “It means the world to me”
Applejack felt her cheeks grow redder by the second and she saw Rara’s do the same.
One moved closer to the other.
The other approached at the same time, and their lips brushed against each other for a second, before parting and meeting again for a longer time.
The both parted not long after, and they both found hard what to do or say at the moment.
Coloratura was faster, moving her head in the opposite direction and looking at the ground.
Applejack felt some tingling sensation as they parted, and found herself lost in the eyes of the other mare.
They stayed like that for some time until they both started to feel the nervousness in the air around them, and Applejack heard the silent cough of Coloratura.
“Coloratura,” she began, “It’s… uh… Getting pretty late for tonight, and I have a lot on my mind right now, so…” She started to get up
“Sorry,” said Coloratura at the ground; looking up to the moon, but not to Applejack, she continued, “I… don’t really know why I did that, but-” This time, she looked at Applejack, frozen with her rear still on the ground “-can I talk to you tomorrow? Before I go?”
Applejack, at a loss of anything else, shook quickly and repeatedly her head up and down.
“I’llbenearthestagetomorrowmornigbye!” Shot a running blitz of colors that, a moment ago, was Coloratura.
Applejack was left in the verge of the town, looking towards a now empty street that still showed lights flickering inside half of the houses.
Not steadily, not quickly and surely not quietly, she got herself to her hooves and started a slow trek towards Sweet Apple Acres, looking up into the sky from time to time as if asking it questions.
It didn’t have many answers, but it sure seemed to ease Applejack’s mind from the stiffness of the last couple of minutes.
Author's Note
Well, that's that, because I'm mostly sleep now and I have just finished writing... Whatever this thing is, so if you have any advice, or spot any typo or just want to say "Man this is crappy" or "This is actually not horrible" or "I enjoyed like a fourth of the thing", you are mostly welcome to do so, just try to make me correct any flaw that it has.
Also, I don't have any idea of why I made them a ship, it just came natural to me when I was touching up the chat here and there.
Anyways, I'll read anything you want to tell me (or yell me) in the morning of today, so it's like 2 am here.