The Crusade had a cost, and Apple Bloom was no longer able to pay.
It wasn't just that which was doled out in frustration, slow-healing bruises, and the near-permanent lingering scent and residue of tree sap. The trio's still-ongoing attempts to find their marks often came with actual price tags attached. For completely random and incidentally, very recent example, let's say somepony wanted to see if they could get a mark for being a balloonist, something Scootaloo had stridently argued against for a full hour before giving in because the truly perfect (if unlikely) goal was for all three to gain the same mark in a single instant and the orange filly really didn't see what the value was for a pegasus having a talent which worked with balloons. But once they'd reminded her of the stunts you could do with a balloon and casually mentioned that there was probably no pegasus in the world who had that mark...
Well, first, you were obviously going to need a clear summer day with very little wind, and the Weather Bureau schedule provided. But after that, you needed a balloon, and there weren't many of those in Ponyville to begin with. Those that were present, like just about everything anypony suspected a Crusader might eventually want to borrow, were locked up within ropes and chains and security spells which none of them knew how to break. (Which was really completely unfair because when the trio borrowed things, they pretty much always tried to return them afterwards if the resulting pieces were still large enough to find.) So that meant you'd have to make a balloon. Somepony would go to the library to learn about that, which usually meant Scootaloo because to have any of them in the library these days was to have Twilight ask about just when she could expect to see the money for the books they'd lost, destroyed, or locked in amber during other portions of the Crusade, not to mention a few inquires on what they were up to this time and if she saw the actual book, things could end before they truly began. Scootaloo went in because she could get in and out the fastest, hopefully before the librarian noticed her and during that time spent within the tree, she would find an appropriate book and read the first ten, twenty, maybe even fifty words. After she'd escaped, they would proceed from there.
Making a balloon meant they needed fabric, and that which was used for balloons was supposedly very special material indeed, something worked so that the eventual contents wouldn't escape, and of course it had to be resistant to tearing and capable of withstanding heat. Which the trio understood was a sales pitch, just another adult way of justifying raising the price for something which should have been close to free because it was just cloth and fabric should have been totally inexpensive, especially when somepony else was paying for it. Clearly any material would do as long as it was worked on properly, and the only real key to working on it properly... well, that true solution was involved in any number of steps and they hoped for it through every last one of them, all the way to the literal crashing end.
Acquiring fabric had once been truly easy, but then Rarity had gotten sick of doing what she called covering their losses and that storeroom had been locked down too. Collecting things out of charity bins (because a mark was the greatest gift anypony could ever gain and so the Crusaders felt they more than qualified for such donations) had led to Stile inventing the one-way drop chute, and Sweetie had spent a very awkward two hours within the cube before anypony could be found to get her out, following the utterly terrifying thirty-six minutes of her friends trying to do it without adults and honestly, if they'd just been able to find a higher cliff...
So costs began to get involved. If they couldn't borrow or scrounge fabric, they had to buy it, which of course meant the cheapest material possible because the true solution was about to take place, and also because nopony who sold the quality stuff allowed them within three body lengths of their shops any more. Stitching methods? The thinnest of thread which would also be helped by the true solution, so Scootaloo never having reached that part of the book (something she might not have done with full days available to study it) didn't matter. Too many bits later, they would have their balloon, or at least a not-even-remotely-ovoid object which would serve as a balloon for them because true solution!
And then there was the device to consider. A balloon needed one, mounted just inside the neck, and there was absolutely no way around that requirement. As far as any of the Crusaders just barely cared to learn, it did something to the air inside, changing it in a way which made lifting possible at all. Devices cost bits, and that was a quantity of income they just didn't have. However, Ponyville had a fix-it shop and they knew what the required device looked like, along with where they'd recently seen one.
It had been just barely possible to distract Ratchette long enough to borrow one which the mechanic had been tinkering with. (Of course she hadn't known they were going to borrow it because if they'd told her, she wouldn't have let them. When permission clearly would never be coming, the polite post-manifest thanks of fillies whose newly-acquired marks were gleaming under Sun was just so much easier.) Now, it was true that Ratchette had probably been tinkering with the device because it was faulty, defective, or just outright broken, but that didn't matter because they were going to install it in the balloon and they had the true solution!
The basket then had to be made.
(She'd had an idea for a basket. A better basket. And then she'd forgotten it, just as quickly and carefully as she could, or at least told herself she had. And no part of that idea had appeared in reality, for such was boring, and boring would end them.)
More costs there, and the budget would just barely stretch for the weakest of purchased lumber, the purchase of which had been required by the presence of a new fleet of security spells around various sites. (Honestly, if you were going to use a modular fence in the first place, you should expect that every so often, three fillies might need to temporarily take it apart.) But true solution, and at the end of it, the balloon would be inflated into that strange shape which would work for them, the device would be sparking and making sounds which flattened ears against skulls, they all got into the basket while failing to notice the hissing of escaping air over the noise coming from the device, they would take off in what any actual balloonist would immediately recognize as a disaster in the process of happening, and then --
-- the true solution would work.
Because inferior materials, faulty construction, and defective devices didn't matter. Only talent. A talent for being a balloonist would bring magic, and surely that magic would either instantly overcome all of the above or make it so that their methods had been the right ones all along. The talent was everything, and what kind of talent would be even briefly paused by a mere bit of trivia like three fillies having done absolutely everything wrong? The talent, and its associated soon-to-triply-appear mark, was the true solution. And surely after all the things they'd tried, including pretty much everything in the mainstream of pony abilities, spontaneously becoming something so fringe as a balloonist just had to be their answer...
The actual crash took place on Golden Harvest's property, because her very expensive myriad of hard-purchased security spells wasn't designed to stop anything coming in from the air. It had taken out some of her crops, most of the one plow blade, and a laundry line which Scootaloo was still insisting should never have been there in the first place and therefore that portion was really all the farmer's fault. (The anchoring points had unsurprisingly provided their mandatory weekly dose of tree sap.) And that led to another piece of math being added to the tally sheet which counted the largest expense of the Crusade: the punishment known as reparations. Because every last one of the adults seemed to have forgotten that when it came to costs, there was no price too great to pay for the gain of a mark, and therefore demanding compensation for damages could just feel completely unfair, especially when you had to pay them out of allowances which had supposedly docked so far into the future that according to a certain big sister, Apple Bloom would need to be born three times just to pay for the previous summer.
They were looking at a new tally sheet in the clubhouse, bodies pressed low against the floor by the crushing weight of poverty.
"It'll work," Scootaloo said. "It'll totally work. We just need to mix enough of the firework powders and the ingredients are cheaper than the finished product, forget about paying for the enchantments. But..." Her wings huddled more tightly than ever against her sides, and the little upwards curl at the front of her mane had started pointing at the ground hours before. "...did everypony check under their beds?"
They nodded.
"Couch cushions? Sometimes when adults sit on couches just right, stuff slides out of saddlebags --"
"I don't have a new couch yet," Sweetie sighed.
"We could go into the river and check your old one."
"I saw the cushions go past me after it flipped," Sweetie pointed out. "They're gallops away by now."
Scootaloo visibly repressed her own sigh, and both friends courteously failed to notice. "Maybe... sell some apples?"
"Ah can't," Apple Bloom said. "Still ain't allowed t' take the cart, an' -- Big Mac would know."
"But it's just Big Mac right now," Scootaloo reminded her. "As long as your sister --"
She noticed the look and stopped, for there were two sisters currently missing. There was a mission in progress: the Bearers had left Ponyville, teleported away from the front of the library to an unknown destination, and to think about that too long was to start thinking about the two horrible words associated with their future return: 'when' and 'if'.
"He's countin'," Apple Bloom told them. "'cause it'll be cider season right soon, so he's keepin' a closer eye on the harvest than usual. And even with the temp workers in until -- it's over, he's tryin' to be everywhere. He'll notice the apples are gone, the cart's gone, an' there's always gonna be ponies who'll tell him we were sellin'. Ah can't do it, Scootaloo. Can't do it at'tall."
"So we're broke." The words casually engraved themselves on the tombstone.
"Yeah."
The friends sadly looked at each other. Gravity temporarily doubled, and three bodies felt as if they would sink through the wood.
"It would work," Scootaloo insisted. "It's just about the only thing left to try. But if we can't pay for it..."
"Maybe Ratchette?" Sweetie proposed. "She's got some chemicals!"
"We ain't gettin' in there again," Apple Bloom groaned. "Trust me on this. Ah... Ah didn't think she could get mad, not at'tall, an'... we can't do it, Sweetie. We ain't welcome there no more." She mentally pulled out her own checklist and added the fix-it shop to the very long list of shops which would no longer accept Crusader presence, although there was no current need to also add it into the subsection dedicated to the places which had taken out restraining orders. "But the library -- ain't like Twilight don't have a whole bunch of stuff in the basement! Scootaloo jus' gets in, right past the temporary librarian, an' --"
"-- I can't," Scootaloo sighed. "She locks it down with a spell when she's -- away, Apple Bloom. I saw the glow once, and I kind of got -- bounced."
"Really?"
"I think she set it up to aim for that one open window."
More slowly, "Seriously now?"
"I know she put the drinking trough under it on purpose."
They all thought about the problem for a while. It was an activity which they were convinced had no associated mark because when it came to just miserably moping about their problems, there was nopony better.
"No allowance left," Apple Bloom reviewed. "Ain't got no savings neither. Can't borrow. Can't get the little jobs 'cause we're kids an' -- we'd hafta go into the stores t' even ask, an'... we mostly can't. Searched our houses. Searched the ground."
"I got screamed at the last time I tried for the fountain and well coins," Scootaloo remembered, which the trio considered to have fallen under both charity and fulfillment of wishes: theirs.
"Rarity told her substitute not to let me sell," Sweetie told them. "Or sew. I think I can breathe so long as it doesn't hit anything."
More thought. The air pressed down on them accordingly.
"I think," Scootaloo said, "we've got to ask ourselves the dumbest question." She just barely managed to raise the hoof which cut off the protests. "I know. But honestly, they're... not all bad. A couple of them still sort of know how to think, even if their priorities are all wrong. Just -- try it this time, okay? And if it doesn't work, we can forget about it after. On three?"
The other two reluctantly nodded, and then they all counted down to the chorus.
"What would the adults do?" the Crusaders said, and they all very reluctantly thought about that.
"Bank loan!" declared Sweetie, who'd watched Rarity grumble her way through multiple payments.
"Not after we tried opening ours," Scootaloo reminded her. (It had been on their single most desperate and boring day ever for Crusade ideas, although the resulting disaster had been up to their usual standards.) "They won't help the competition."
"Stable sale?" Apple Bloom tried.
The others blinked.
"Stable sale..." Scootaloo slowly repeated. "That's what you do when you've got too much stuff and you want bits instead, so you try to get other ponies to take your stuff and give you bits..."
"I don't have a lot of -- stuff," Sweetie considered. "Maybe some toys I don't play with any more and a few dresses which Rarity was practicing on me with and told me to keep, the ones that don't fit now. But if it'll help, I'll sell it. It's just not that much."
"Old toys here, same," Apple Bloom decided. "But -- not that much. Same problem."
"None of us own that much," Sweetie said. "Put it all together and it's just not much times three."
Scootaloo blinked. Smiled, and her legs thrust at the floor, overcoming gravity, atmosphere, and imminent depression in one hard push.
"None of us alone own that much," she grinned. "But all of us do!"
Apple Bloom, still dedicated to a dejection-triggered non-magical phase through the wood, just barely managed to stare up at her. "It's not gonna be enough --"
"I don't own a lot of stuff!" Scootaloo declared. "The Crusaders do!"
Her left foreleg stretched out, pointed beyond walls and Acres. They followed the invisible line, and then they knew.
"Come on, everypony!" the pegasus happily shouted. "Let's see what's there!"
The shack had been abandoned before any of them had been born, unused for their whole lives until they'd found it, so close to the edge of the settled zone. They had felt free to claim something so completely deserted, and nopony had ever argued their possession. But it wasn't something they could sell: they didn't own the land -- nopony did -- and the shack itself was in rather rough shape.
They didn't use it as a Crusade staging area: that was reserved for other places, some of which still had a lingering stink, discolored tree bark, and indentations from multiple impact zones. It was a place they didn't want to approach and so inevitably wound up going there time after time, heads low and teeth clenched around the latest tow rope. Because the shack was where the failures were stored.
When they tried for a mark and didn't make it (again), there would often be debris, and not all of that would come from whatever they'd just crashed into. The failed talent was meant to be for making things? Well, they would have made -- things, and those things had to go somewhere. They'd written something? Sweetie had learned that the place for storing old articles was typically called the morgue, which felt far too close to reality for use as a term -- but the shack was where their personal copies went. Failed in a race, contest, school play? Last-place trophies, entry cards, and background sets were carefully stored, silently ignored and no matter how hard they tried, never forgotten.
The shack, if it somehow found a curator willing to catalog the collection, could be seen as something of a museum. To step within would be, after a lot of sorting and the use of vast quantities of glue, to behold the history of the Crusade, stretched out across -- they didn't think about that. It could be argued that all three knew exactly how long they'd been trying for, often down to the minute, and so they never thought about it.
They seldom discussed the shack, and that day marked but the second time they'd ever gone there while talking, certainly the first trip to be made with the entire trio happy. It had been named all of once, by Scootaloo, who had followed a particularly bitter failure by quietly announcing the shuffle-hoofed trip to the Junkedyard.
None of them had ever been excited to go. Nor had the trio truly surveyed the shack's contents, because to look back was to risk seeing, and so they would not. At least, not until that moment, when failure began to twist towards what they could once again only see as success. There was a new kaleidoscope to distort their sight and when gazing through the lens of a fresh hope, everything started to look beautiful.
Mostly.
"A lot of this is... kind of junky," Sweetie reluctantly admitted.
"Broken," Apple Bloom confirmed, glancing at the largest section, which was mostly occupied by pieces of parade float.
"Have you seen what ponies buy at stable sales?" Scootaloo beamed. "They love junk! The junkier, the better! Some of this stuff might be too good!"
The other two thought about the stable sales they'd seen, then smiled.
"You're right," Apple Bloom breathed. "All kinds of trash, absolute junk... Ah think -- Ah think we can do this. At least enough bits for the chemical stuff. And then we'll be ready t' try. We jus' need t' put it all out there an' after that, ponies are gonna come by an' practically kick their bits at us..."
"We'll need signs," Sweetie realized. "Ponies who have stable sales put up signs with directions and arrows."
"To where it is, yeah," Apple Bloom agreed. "But where are we gonna have it? We can't get ponies t' come out here. Scootaloo's just got a backyard, an' y'kinda want t' have a stable sale out in the street. Not much room in front of her place, sure not enough t' put all this."
She looked at all that and for a moment, the scope of it nearly found a home behind her eyes --
"Maybe my house?" Sweetie offered. "Only my neighbors would --" reluctantly "-- maybe not my house."
"Acres are too far out," Apple Bloom sighed. "Ponies ain't comin' that far unless we've got cider."
"So why don't we --" Scootaloo began to propose.
"-- can't." Apple Bloom was sure she could make the wondrous drink properly, but... "Apples ain't ready yet. An' --" it was always awkward, talking about magic with her friends, especially when she could only say so much and that always felt so stupid, she was sure they'd understand "-- Ah can't speed up that much all by mahself, not enough. Big Mac would need t' help, or Ah'd have t' talk the temps into it an' either way, he'd want t' know why. Might let me do it for a stable sale, or might tell me Ah was --" she visibly reached for the vocabulary "-- undercuttin' the market by launchin' too early." Pouting, "Probably that last." For her big brother, as a decided adult, had no true priorities at all.
"We're all on different edges of Ponyville," Sweetie pointed out. "We need a place with a lot of pony traffic, something central. And carts, to haul it all there."
Scootaloo smiled again.
"I've got a place."
The huge white pegasus wasn't talking. Admittedly, most Ponyville residents would see that as something close to normal, a mere tiny step down from a perceived one-word vocabulary. But Scootaloo was one of the few ponies he did speak with, starting from the spring of that year: she had tried to hire him as her trainer in flight through strength, and it had turned into homework reviews and cloud-skimming wakeboarding. (The visible effect was to make Scootaloo's body more streamlined than ever, along with a rather startling jump in her grades added to the occasional tendency to mouthwrite a fully legible word.) They spent hours together, and... it was time taken away from the Crusade, which Scootaloo would only grumble about when the others directly brought it up. It was time Apple Bloom and Sweetie didn't really understand, and those hours were something the filly involved could never quite explain. But they had all gone to Fluttershy's cottage so that Scootaloo could speak with the pony who watched over the animals while their caretaker was on a mission. And to them, it meant that strange relationship might finally be about to pay off.
"So you're booked!" Scootaloo gushed. "Fluttershy hired you to work at the cottage for the whole time she's --" an awkward glance back at the others, then "-- away, and that means nopony else can hire you, Snowflake! She's got all your time paid for!"
He slowly nodded, twisted his lips a little, then winced at that movement. Portions of his face showed recent scratches, others were discolored from medicine, and his left ear was heavily bandaged. Sections of his torso and legs had been covered in poultices and he smelled strongly of zebra medicine, which was to say the smell was very nearly pleasant.
"And that means you don't need your space in the town square on Market Day! Your tent isn't going to be there because Day And Night Labor isn't taking new bookings for a while! Your space is just going to be sitting there, all paid for and empty..."
Another nod. The little brown hare curled up in the hollow of his back stretched a little, then fell asleep.
"So -- can we?"
They could see him thinking about it, along with every last little expression of discomfort.
"...um..." Scootaloo finally said, "...was it Harry?" Everypony was fairly sure Snowflake would win a fight with Harry, but the concept of his having had one was a little harder to deal with.
He shook his head, mustered a small sigh, then reluctantly opened his mouth.
"Tongue burned," he just barely got out. "Can't talk much. It'll heal. Details later. Spot's yours. But..." Reluctantly, "Scootaloo, I don't think -- this is going to work."
His face scrunched up in pain, and he spent a few seconds gasping for breath.
"Don't talk," she hastily said. "Don't try to write too much, either, not if the quill's going to touch your tongue. Please. But -- we can have it?"
He silently nodded.
"And carts? Can we use your hauling cart? And if you know where we can get any more..."
Again.
"All right! Cutie Mark Crusaders Stable Sale -- um... is go," she carefully finished. "Not yay. Just go. Because I know we're good enough to make the money," and she'd carefully avoided telling him what that money was going to be spent on, "but I don't want to be so good that we get a mark for it. A talent for stable sales: is there anything more boring? Actually, if we start doing really well, maybe we should just stop..."
He managed a smile. And with the other two watching in total confusion, she briefly nuzzled against his forelegs, careful not to put too much pressure on the poultices. It meant they all missed seeing the worry take over his face.
There had been a little bit of a challenge at the start, and then a little more during the entrance.
Just packing it all up... to Apple Bloom, it had been strange. Uncomfortable. There had been chatter during most of the process, but only when the fillies remembered what they were doing and decided that chatter was necessary to keep from thinking about it too much. Fantasies flew back and forth across the shack: how much money they were going to make, all the things they could spend it on after the very next Crusade surely brought their marks into manifest, which would give them so many bits left over and the adults didn't have to know about all of them. (There were some tentative plans made to channel some of the funds into reparations, and even more conceived for making sure the adults didn't claim everything.) But even while they were planning and fantasizing and laughing, with all the mirth feeling too loud within her half-back ears, she was looking at... time.
All of the time. The entire Crusade, kept within a single huge shack.
When they went inside... when another plan had failed because the true solution hadn't come... they didn't look around. Their gazes would be directed towards the gradually decreasing amount of empty floor, following paths which became more narrow with every subsequent trip. And there was always another trip, because the next idea was fantastic, the best one they'd ever had, the thing which would work -- and then there would be another slow trot out to the shack.
Another, and another, and another, stretching across weeks and moons and...
...Apple Bloom didn't think about it. At the most, she treated the past as nothing more than a dual-column list. Here: the name of a skill, which they knew would turn out to be a talent. There might be an icon next to that, one of the more common marks symbolizing that talent or, if Scootaloo had been the one to propose that part of the Crusade, it would be what that filly saw as the coolest one. And there, after they had tried, a single word: NO. Not their mark, not for all or any. On to the next, and they would not think about the last in any way other than that NO. They had tried, they had failed, and it was on to the next, which would succeed. The past had to be ignored because when you started to think about it, the sheer weight felt as if it was pushing into the future. Like it could crush.
She didn't think, and she didn't look, and so the Crusade went on in an eternal now.
But now she was among her failures. Every last one of them.
The coil of a zipline, and the scorched place where it had burnt through. Old school newspapers. Tattered fabrics. Warped attempts at jewelry. A bloodstained stick from which they'd once hung a piece of meat in an attempt to direct what had turned into the world's worst dogsled, right next to what little was left of the sleigh. A whole lot of parade float pieces, which really wasn't part of the main Crusade, but it had to be kept somewhere and since they hadn't gotten a mark for that either...
...Apple Bloom had done most of the design work for the float. It had been -- fun. It was almost like there was something special involved in glancing at this gear and that, seeing how they were supposed to go together, working out the means by which they could be directed or controlled, made to go right or wrong, and... there had been moments when it had started to feel easy, and easy had been followed by good, and when you went past good --
-- you found pointless.
There was no joy in blueprints. No satisfaction in gears, no magic in design, because it wasn't exciting. It wasn't bold and daring and life-risking and any of the other things Scootaloo valued so much. It was just -- boring, painful, excruciating to make things the right way, to make them better. Her friend didn't like ponies who were boring. Scootaloo wanted to see a little bit of awesome in anypony she associated with, just for starters, and...
...Apple Bloom didn't make things better and when she felt the urge rising to do so, she would stop until it passed. It wasn't as if she was doing things wrong just to make it go away. But if she got her mark, and that mark was boring --
-- she wouldn't let that happen, would never allow it. She...
...didn't think about it. At all. She never thought about any of it, because the three of them needed to go on together. She wouldn't lose the group, the adventures, and the bond which was so close to a sibling one from the fatal wound of boredom.
The past didn't matter. Only the future, and that future had them united. They needed to find their marks as one, find something they could all do, because they were --
-- we're gettin' older.
Scootaloo's wings are bigger than they were at the start of summer. She's got new feathers growing in, flight feathers. Sweetie's horn is sparking more than ever, an' some of those are starting t' thicken around her horn. She's almost got a corona. Any week, any moon now, we're gonna find out what her trick is, minutes after she does 'cause first thing she'll do is come an' tell us. An' I can hear the earth more than ever, Ah feel like there's stuff Ah could almost try t' say an' --
-- we still don't have our marks.
We're the last ones in our class without 'em.
They're mah friends. But the thing that makes us friends is -- the Crusade. We're all lookin' together. We stay together 'cause we've gotta keep lookin'. An' if one of us finds our mark an' the other two don't -- what happens to us? What if one of us had a boring mark, somethin' stupid an' dull an' dumb? What if we...
Piles of debris. Mounds of dead hopes. Mountains of failure.
...what if we never.
What if we never.
There's the newspapers. Gabby Gums. All the stuff we did wrong an' all the ponies who hated us for it. An' newspapers, they've got a date on 'em. Can't not see it. Don't wanna see it an' it's right there. That was back in --
-- all this stuff. Everything we did wrong was back in. Back then. Back, an' then back some more, an'...
We've been at this for nearly three years an' we still don't have our marks.
"-- hey, Apple Bloom!"
She blinked, looked up and back. "Huh?"
"I yelled like six times!" Scootaloo grinned. "I know it's way too early and all, but try to stay awake! We've got to get this packed up under Moon so we can be all set up when Sun is raised! Get the first shoppers, maybe even a few ponies on their way to the train! So one more time: what kind of candy are you going to get first, before we bring the carts back?"
"Um... not taffy," she managed. "Remember the taffy?"
Scootaloo frowned. "Why do you want to go thinking about that dumb stuff?" Her head turned, and carefully unseeing eyes failed to registered the nature of her latest pile. "Just pack! I'd really rather not deal with that pony who runs the market, and if we get there early enough..."
They didn't, and that was the challenge at the entrance. The market's manager wasn't a pony they'd dealt with all that often: Apple Bloom couldn't remember more than three apology tours which had stopped at that mare's house. It didn't feel like the adult had any real reason to be so tense with them. But the facts were apparently (eventually) undeniable: Snowflake had already paid for the space rental and if he was occupied, he had the right to send another in his stead. He'd even painfully mouthwritten out a letter giving the fillies formal permission to take his place for the day. It hadn't stopped the manager from verbally kicking in all directions in an attempt to find anything which would get them out. She'd tried to say that the space was meant as a work-for-hire station, and so they couldn't use it for anything else: Sweetie had nervously mentioned the times it had been offered to Applejack when the harvest was heavy enough to justify two spots and Snowflake had other engagements set up. She'd told them they were too young to sell, and Apple Bloom had managed to bring up all the school bake sales which claimed square body lengths during the year, none of which Cheerilee would still allow them to attend. She'd...
...told them she was going to have the police regularly passing through. As a preventive measure, so there would be somepony around when it all finally exploded.
Apple Bloom thought she'd been to the mare's house three times. Applejack had been with her for at least one of those because there was usually an adult along during an apology tour, mostly to make sure they finished making it. She'd spoken to the mare three times, eyes downcast and sounding just as sorry as could be when she let the words come out, things she'd said so many times as to remove all personal meaning from the utterance. Most of that apology tour time would be spent thinking about the next Crusade, and almost none about the last. Everything existed in the now, for the near-future found marks, everything after that was wonder, and the past didn't matter since all of it would be justified and forgiven and worth it just as soon as their marks came.
Three times at that house -- no. There might have been a fourth, and...
...what had she been apologizing for?
Was some of it on Sweetie Belle's cart? The stuff she was pullin' on the second trip, which we left in front of the entrance while we went back for the third load.
They'd been up for hours. Apple Bloom was already tired, and that weariness made it hard to hold off the siege of memory.
Was it the time that one thing caught on fire?
Maybe the other time everythin' caught fire.
Or... the other, or maybe it was...
"Get in there," the manager tensely said. "Sell your junk, if you can. Pack up everything you don't sell and be out on time. And if you do any damage, you're doing it on Snowflake's ticket and I will collect. I may just pull his rental. Maybe he's immune to the Crusade, but..." Her tail, which had started lashing at the sight of them, was now moving so quickly as to have the breeze resequence the old newspapers. "Anything that happens is on him. I hope he knows that, because it's not as if he can afford an actual storefront and there's one market."
Scootaloo blinked. "But -- we're selling! Not him! He's just trying to take care of the cottage, he's hurt --"
"-- so you finally got him?" the manager cut her off. "I knew that couldn't last forever."
They all stared at her. She slowly shook her head.
"Get in," she said. "Enjoy your day. Then get out."
It took several trips: reload the cart, haul to the space, unload the cart, back to the entrance, and repeat. They wound up having to clear some portions in a hurry, as their piles were blocking several vendors from their usual access routes and having to shift two or three body lengths in any direction seemed to be the greatest possible offense. It also took a lot of room, because the shack was on the large side and Snowflake's spot was just a single conventional assignment. His tent didn't take up all of it, and so the area seemed so much larger when he was using it. With the contents of the Junkedyard fully transferred to Ponyville... well, in the end, they wound up with narrow trails moving between recreated piles, with some of what they'd decided was the best stuff perched on a carpet scrap which had been aligned to face the aisle.
They worked under nearly-full waxing Moon, moving towards soon-to-be-risen Sun. And during all of it, the other vendors watched them. Apple Bloom saw those on their left and right head towards the manager. Going back for her fourth load allowed her to pass the second of those conversations, just in time to hear that no, there wasn't an empty space to shift that pony into, they would just have to take their chances and the manager was very sorry, but the vendor had to remember that natural disasters weren't covered by anything other than the government's relief fund and if those three were anything...
...but then she'd been past them, at the same moment her ears finally finished pressing against her head.
She hadn't been to the market in a long time, not as a seller. There had been that time when she'd tried to work with her family's cart, and... well, after that, it had been Applejack or Big Mac. During a true emergency, it was Granny. Apple Bloom wasn't going to get her mark in apple selling and probably not in apple anything, not after
nearly three years
and after that failed sales attempt -- well, there had been times when she had to go find a sibling, or take shelter in their shadow when the latest part of the Crusade had failed. Plus she'd been able to shop, early on, before all of her allowance had gone to supplies and reparations
Ah don't think Ah've bought mahself anythin' in -- managed t' hide a little, got birthday an' Hearth's Warmin' presents, jus' barely, but for mahself, it's been nearly
but as her money had been rerouted, as the price of the Crusade mounted, the other vendors had started to -- look at her. The way they were looking at her now. As if... something was about to go wrong, and they didn't want to be there when it happened. They didn't want her there.
She'd been to their houses, hadn't she? All of their houses and apartments and homes, every last one, and she didn't remember what she'd been apologizing for.
They were looking at her, with nerves, worry, and anger sharing space in focused eyes. None of that said they'd ever believed her.
Back to the rental space, where Sweetie's horn was prodding what was nearly the last pile into a somewhat more stable position.
"Almost there," the little unicorn said, and there was a cheerfulness there. Apple Bloom had known her long enough to hear that it was completely false. "We'll see those bits in a few minutes, Apple Bloom! I just hope the first ponies have exact change. I still couldn't find anything, my dad's still on the road trip, and I... couldn't ask my mom for much of a -- starting bank?" Apple Bloom nodded: that was the term. "So I can't break too many bits before running out. But maybe one of the other vendors would give us some change --" and after too long a hesitation "-- right?"
She sees 'em staring too.
"Ah think... we shouldn't ask too much," Apple Bloom managed. "'cause they need it for themselves. But Big Mac gave me a little t' work with: he's jus' expectin' nearly all of it back. He told me it was okay if Ah used some t' get us all breakfast an' lunch. Might be home in time for dinner iffin we don't have much t' haul back. How's Scootaloo doin'?"
"Almost ready!" came from the back of the spot. "Just making sure some of the rough edges don't show! Look sharp, everypony! Sky's going pink: here comes Sun! And as soon as Sun gets here... well, maybe even before that! Unicorn shoppers, getting the first deals by corona shine, like Rarity would! Are the signs out?"
"Yeah!" Sweetie called back. "All done there, except for the last load! And Apple Bloom's got that now!"
"All right!" Scootaloo declared. "Remember, everypony, this is for our marks! -- well, not the selling. We've sold stuff lots of times, so we know that's not it. And selling is too boring for a decent mark, anyway. It's for the money for the chemicals for the next Crusade, and that's for our marks! So don't be afraid to bargain a little! It's okay to offer better rates for bulk. Just don't act like every customer is Rarity and we're the sellers who hide under our tables hoping she'll go away -- sorry, Sweetie, but you know what she's like, and -- just come on, everypony! One more unload, a couple of extra piles, and then we are -- rich? Not rich. Comfortably well off? And we are gonna be marked!"
There were a few unicorns wandering the market's aisles before Sun was fully brought up, along with a pegasus awkwardly balancing a device along a outstretched wing, and an earth pony whose glowing saddlebags created something very close to daylight. None of them stopped in front of the carpet scrap or wandered down the trails. But that wasn't much of a surprise: some of them had to catch the train, it would have been awkward to move around the piles with that wing extended, and...
...well, they did look at the space, some with visible surprise: possibly those who'd been expecting the usual blue canvas tent. Then they would see the piles, and some of them would start to trot forward. The next look would inevitably reach the trio, waiting behind that carpet scrap.
Some of them shuddered. Others pulled back. All of them looked away.
Apple Bloom saw it all. She would glance to Sweetie sometimes when the sounds of backward-scrabbling hooves began, and she thought the filly was getting most of it. But Scootaloo just kept beaming at each and every prospective non-customer, trying to let that wide smile serve as open invitation to approach.
And as pony after pony trotted away, with one actually taking flight, just barely shifting the lantern device to her mouth in time, that smile became stronger.
Sun had been raised and the rays glinted off their piles, at least for those portions which weren't burnt, stained, or still covered in sap.
The low rumbling grind of familiar axles reached Apple Bloom's still-lowered ears, and she looked down the aisle to see her family's cart being pulled in, a full hour after it should have been. She took a silent moment for thinking about stupid temps and their low standards for quality work, then resolved to tell her brother all about it when she finally got home. (He had wished her luck, given her that portion of bank, and... looked worried. She hadn't been able to make herself ask why.) And of course, Applejack would have to be informed, just as soon as --
when. if.
She'd been very young when it had happened: too young to remember much from those days and she hated that: how little she truly remembered, how it became harder to remember with every passing year. She had briefly taken to spending solitary time with old photo albums just because it gave her something which she could pretend to recall, as if she'd been lurking just out of the camera's sight for every shot. But she knew this much: they had gone on a trip -- and they'd never come back.
Sweetie's father left home all the time, for that was part of his job. In a way, his time of danger was supposedly past (not that it had mattered for the Apples): hoofball coach now instead of player, although she imagined that a particularly bad (or deliberate) tackle might go into the sidelines. But when it came to Rarity, Sweetie worried. She tried not to show it and never really talked about it, but the worries were still there, and they mostly expressed themselves as a tight huddle against Apple Bloom's left flank when it started to feel as if too many days had passed.
With Scootaloo, it was different, for her hero had simply gone on another adventure and when she came back, there would be yet another reason for worship. But Sweetie worried, and for Apple Bloom...
The palace calls her. Says they need her to go on a trip. An' maybe one day, she ain't --
There was a pegasus mare in front of the carpet scrap. She'd stopped. She was looking at one of the signs.
"'Amazing Color-Changing Scarves!'" she read aloud. Then, much more slowly, "Really."
"Yeah!" Scootaloo immediately perked up. "If you wrap them around your neck -- any part of your fur, really -- and leave it there for a couple of hours, anything the scarf was touching turns green!"
Memory slowly shifted forward for all three.
"Or if you're already green, it turns pink," Sweetie reluctantly said. "But you're purple, so it should be green. All the other purple ponies turned green."
The mare was staring at them. It was a very familiar stare.
"So that's how you're marketing it?" she asked, and there was a faint vibration in her voice, amplified by fast-shifting feathers. "As a feature of the piece?"
"Well," Scootaloo quickly justified, "ponies buy fur dye! When they want to look a little different. And this changes your color without dye, and the dye smells really bad for a few hours, where this just makes you itch." She nodded towards the sign. "Sweetie wrote the itching part down. Because we're looking out for our customers, and that means our buyers know all the stuff it does! So if you wanted to buy it for a prank --"
"I remember," the pegasus cut her off. "I remember the color. And the itching. But none of you remember me, do you?"
They looked at her, and the image of yet another apartment door flashed before Apple Bloom's unwilling inner gaze.
"I --" and Scootaloo's smile nearly slipped. "It's just that there's a lot of ponies around, and --"
"-- I already purchased this," the pegasus said. "When you supposedly didn't know about what they did. I also got the matching saddlebag set, because you told me it was for a school fundraiser and no matter how hideous it all looked, I at least wanted to support the school."
We did say that.
Scootaloo thought it would bring sales up. She was thinking about the ugly sponges the school did ask us t' try an' sell. An' some ponies took 'em 'cause it was for school. So a few sales would prove we'd made everythin' the right way, an' maybe sellin' what we made would finish off what started from makin' it, our flanks would glow, all three of us would have our flanks glow 'cause that was what had t' happen an' it took so long to talk Scoots into somethin' as boring as scarves an' saddlebags anyway, she only went along with it 'cause we put the little metal spikes on the outside -- mostly on the outside -- an' painted some flames. That happened back in --
-- that was years ago.
"I'm sure there's something you could do to make me buy this again," the pegasus told Scootaloo. "If it was a much cloudier day, you could actually reach the clouds on your own, and I wasn't willing to just take the bolt."
There was a word which was supposed to make everything all right. It was a word which Apple Bloom had said during every apology tour and during all those repeated visits, it was a word she'd never truly heard emerging from her own mouth.
"Sorry..." she just barely got out, and found her gaze resting on the mare's hooves. It meant she only heard the snort.
"Sorry," the mare disdainfully repeated. "As sorry as you were every other time."
The backblast of wind from takeoff rearranged several of the signs. They spent a minute in straightening, and none of them looked at either of the others.
Getting breakfast had been hard. Leaving their space, that was easy, and Apple Bloom had quickly volunteered to be the one who fetched the food. But after leaving... well, she had to find food somewhere. She had to buy it, and that meant galloping around Ponyville, looking at shops, stands, restaurants, and another kind of internal list.
Borrowed from that one. Still payin' those reparations. Can't go there.
Kinda... well, we found where most of the kitchen landed. Not there.
Met him the first day he moved t' town. Same day we were tryin' for our mark in tandem acrobatics. Needed a pony on his back with his hooves up t' catch us at the base, an' it had t' be an adult 'cause that's how the stunt worked. He saw us practicin' an' asked if we needed any help. We all said yes, Ah think we lied 'bout how long we'd been practicin', he got down on his back with his hooves up, all smilin', we all jumped an'... can't buy off him.
Restraining order over there.
There too.
An' that's where we -- not there, never there...
She finally had to use a completely new place, one whose proprietor had just moved to town, purchasing food she'd never seen for a price she wasn't sure was fair, and then slowly made her way back to the market square.
"What happened?" Sweetie worriedly asked as Apple Bloom trudged back into sight. "You were gone forever! But neither of us could go after you because if there was a sales rush, there would only be one of us trying to take bits and if we both went, then... well, maybe we could have left one of the helmets upside-down or something. But you didn't come back, and -- what's that smell?"
"Ah don't know," Apple Bloom honestly answered, slowly picking out a path around the carpet scrap. "It's from Prance an' it costs bits. That's all I could get."
"What about the Cakes?" Scootaloo quickly asked. "We can always get stuff from Sugarcube Corner!"
"When Pinkie's there," was the simple reply. "An' she ain't. Without her, the Cakes... remember the flour fountain, Scootaloo?"
It got a brief frown. "Why are you bringing that up? That must have been -- anyway, I said I was sorry!"
"An' the yeast was after that," Apple Bloom went on. "Did we ever say we were sorry 'bout the yeast?"
Sweetie blushed. "That was when we were trying to be crimestoppers."
"Well," Scootaloo huffily said, "that wasn't my fault. All anypony said is that yeast is alive. So if you're cooking with yeast and it doesn't survive the oven, then it was murder. We were rescuing the potential victims and making a citizen's arrest. For practice. Before we went out and did the big stuff. And if it wasn't for the police chief --"
"Remember Officer Brassie?"
A very long pause. "The mare who kept showing up when we hadn't done anything wrong. Yeah."
"Ah ain't seen her. In a long time. An'... Ah think Ah heard somepony say she left town 'cause she didn't wanna deal with us no more."
"At least she stopped showing up," Scootaloo decided, and they could both hear the anger starting to rise. "Why are you thinking about old stuff so much?"
"'cause it's right here," Apple Bloom quietly replied. "All the old stuff. Every last tenth-bit of it, at least for what wasn't completely burned or exploded or just gone. It's all... right here. And if Ah'm here too, it's hard not t' remember, an'..."
An' maybe everypony passing us is remembering too.
"It doesn't matter," Scootaloo insisted. "The past is gone! We've got to look ahead! Just think about those chemicals, and the fireworks, and our marks! And that'll help you sell!"
Apple Bloom's response was to silently nose the food bag forward. Her friends took their portions, and they all chewed for a while.
"It's not bad," Sweetie decided as three ponies trotted by, steadily accelerating until they cleared the immediate area. "Really from Prance?"
"That's what the cook said."
"Dad goes to Prance sometimes for games," Sweetie thoughtfully replied. "Maybe I'll ask him to bring some stuff back."
"So how much sold while Ah was out?"
"Um..." Red rose under white fur. "Nothing."
"Anypony stop?"
"...no."
"It's still early!" Scootaloo declared. "And somepony will always buy! Just wait!"
They waited. It wasn't early any more.
There were some kids in the market: some with their parents, others by themselves or traveling with friends, for it was still summer, if only just, and there was a little time left in which to roam. The kids mostly didn't have much in the way of bits, so there wasn't much point in hoping they would come over. Besides, practically nothing about the Crusade or what it had produced was meant to be kid stuff, because the whole point of getting a mark was that it meant you'd grown up. They'd always tried to do things adults could accomplish, at least for the adults they'd wanted to be: grown mares who still had their priorities sorted out.
Well -- there had been the time they'd tried to make some cool toys, because adults did that and then sold them to kids. Apple Bloom had come up with an idea about putting stuff inside a doll so that you could turn a crank on the outside and the toy pony would trot. But it had been stupid, because it would have taken weeks of getting just the right parts and doing trials on all the finicky little bits to make sure it all went together in the right order. When you had a talent, things should happen instantly. You shouldn't just be good at having ideas and then need to work before any of them became real.
Apple Bloom had ideas, and all of them needed to be worked on. Plus they were all boring, or at least... well, anypony else would think they were boring, so everypony else was right. She hadn't worked on the trotting doll: it would have taken too long. Instead, they'd made squeeze toys, because they'd found some old molds. Old enough to have a few hairline cracks. And then they'd gotten the part about dunking to cool wrong through dunking the molds, and...
...oh no.
They didn't have any bits: that was the whole reason for having done this. And the last thing anypony wanted when they didn't have money was to see somepony who did and was never going to spend them with you.
"Oh, horse apples," Apple Bloom muttered, having decided some time ago that she was old enough to say it. "Maybe -- maybe she won't see us?"
Sweetie glanced in the right (or given what she got to see, wrong) direction. "We haven't seen her all summer! I thought we might dodge all the way to school! Oh, why now..."
"She's trotting kind of slow," Scootaloo noticed. "And her head's down. Maybe she won't see..."
"If wishes were marks, we'd all have cutie pox," Apple Bloom groaned. "Oh please, please don't look over here --"
But she did.
It was a slow sort of look. The head gradually came up, the white-streaked mane shifted. Her head turned, and the tiara reflected strangely in the sunlight. And then the ears (she often boasted about the perfect shape of her ears) rotated, her body turned to suit, and she began the careful trot towards them.
"I'm going to kick her," Scootaloo hissed. "This time, I swear, it's going to be a kick. I don't care what Snowflake said about not being the first to attack. It's defending ponies: he said the rules are different for that. It's defending us. She says one word and --"
Pink hooves stopped. Light blue eyes went from filly to filly.
"One of you," she softly said, words pitched in that expert way which would reach their ears alone, "should pick something off a pile. Something you've got a lot of. Then you go in front and start fighting about it. You say you're got to have it, you tell her you just realized what it's worth and you're not letting it go at that price any more, then you insist she has to honor the sign no matter how much you can resell it for. Not right now. When everypony who can see you selling together right now is gone, when the next wave of customers comes in. They'll wonder what you've got, that's worth so much. And it'll drive up demand."
Apple Bloom eventually checked, and found neither of her friends could blink either.
"We can't do that," she finally said.
"Why?"
"'cause even if it works, ponies will try t' resell it," Apple Bloom decided. "An' when they can't..."
"Oh." The word had somehow been even smaller than its sound. "I just thought... At least put the burnt stuff deep inside the piles. And rotate your display." She slowly nodded to herself. "Some ponies walk around here two or three times before they leave. They need to see something different so they'll think you sold what was out front before. And if they think you're selling, they might decide there's something to buy. You're definitely not rotating the front display enough."
Three minds frantically worked for nearly half a minute, and the only thing any of the desperate activity produced was a single "...right..." from Apple Bloom, who mostly released it into the world for having no idea what else could be done with the thing.
It got her a nod. No insult. No sneer. Just -- a nod.
"Come on, Cameo," Diamond Tiara said, and trotted away.
Eventually (and all at once), their blinks came back.
"Who's... who's Cameo?" Sweetie finally got out. "She was alone!"
"She's got a new tiara," Scootaloo said for lack of absolutely everything else: the shock had gone that deep. "The old one didn't have that weird gold oval in the center."
"She's lost it," Apple Bloom decided. "She finally went an' completely lost it..."
The others nodded to that. Diamond had lost it.
Time passed.
"So..." Scootaloo eventually proposed. "...do we -- rotate the display?"
"Y'wanna do something she said?"
"It -- didn't sound mean," Scootaloo tried to reconcile. "It sounded... I don't know what it sounded like. But this stuff hasn't moved, so..."
"It's Diamond," Apple Bloom flatly stated. "Don't care."
"Fine."
They all watched ponies go by for a while, trying not to think about how quickly they were moving.
"I think that oval had wings," Scootaloo said.
"Good. Maybe it'll fly her away."
Memory marched past them or, more often, ran.
Borrowed his dog.
Used the stuff from his shed.
Landed in her garden.
Landed on her garden. Sort of. We hit the greenhouse first. So it was the glass an' then us.
One stallion had come to a full stop, his gaze fixed on a tool sticking out of a pile. He'd looked interested. His head had been moving back for his left saddlebag. But the change in angle had let him see them, and he'd stopped.
"Not again," he'd said. "Not this time." And he left.
Half of them won't look at us. Half won't stop lookin'. Some won't talk. Some do. But they've all got one thing in common.
They all remember.
An' when they remember, it makes me remember, an'...
Ah've talked t' every last one of these ponies. Ah've been t' all of their homes. An' Ah've told them all Ah was sorry while Ah usually didn't believe any of it, 'cause whatever Ah did would have been worth it if we'd all gotten our marks, but we didn't so we had t' do somethin' else an' we couldn't do anythin' until we finished apologizing for the last thing, so it was jus' getting it over with.
Was Ah really an' truly sorry? Ever?
Ah... don't know.
An' Ah think they do.
Lunchtime arrived and Sweetie went out, for Scootaloo was determined to stay in the space until the first sale was made, even with her seller's smile having reached the point where it was visibly paining her.
"Maybe it's like teapots," Apple Bloom said. "Won't happen 'til y'stop lookin'."
Challenging, just because there was something to challenge. "Are you saying I'm a jinx?"
"Naw. Just that y'might want t' stretch out a little. Y'usually don't hold still half this long."
"I'm fine."
"Your wings are twitchin'."
"I'm. Fine."
And it was the last thing they said to each other for the sale-free hour until Sweetie got back with another bag of food from Prance, for she had found nopony else she could buy from.
Time flew when they were Crusading. Ideas could come quicker than lightning, plans were occasionally drawn up faster than that because you didn't need safety checks when your rapidly-approaching talent was going to make sure everything worked out perfectly. They lived in the now because the past wasn't worth thinking about and the future they were about to create would be an ideal one. When the Crusade was on, the clock flowed like a waterfall and brought the same number of crashes into the rocks.
But sitting in the market, trying so hard to look pleasant and approachable and worth dealing with, at least worth coming in for a minute, somepony please at least come in... time slowed, stretched, and did so in a very specific way.
Ponies looked at them, at Apple Bloom. Some only looked. More than a few snorted. There were some who had words, with every last comment born from experience. It all came together and worked a magic Apple Bloom couldn't break.
A single second would pass, eventually.
Talk t' me.
Please talk t' me.
Ah... jus' want t' say Ah'm sorry...
And every last one of them took nearly three years.
They could have stayed until dark: some vendors did. But they had... stuff to haul. All of it, for to leave anything behind was to have the blame fall on Snowflake. It was going to take several trips (they'd hoped it would take one, maybe even just a single cart), and so when they'd heard the first of the major commuter trains blow its whistle as it returned its passengers home, they'd silently begun to pack.
The original plan, in the event that they'd somehow wound up with more than two carts' worth, was to have one filly stay behind and guard the rest of the piles. It was silently abandoned. Nopony was going to steal anything from them, not when so much of the settled zone had gone through the market and everypony knew who'd been selling it. They didn't even have anything worth stealing.
It all had to be put back. The sets they'd sort of painted, the costumes which hadn't been meant for comedy, sheet music which barely held a legible note. There were fragments and cracked bits and things which couldn't be identified any more. Saddlebags which turned your fur green and jewelry which just made fur fall out, because surely somepony would want to try out the bald ear look or at least go for the prank value. A single surviving sleigh runner, because maybe there was a pony in need of a spare, and then there was rope which had frayed and helmets which had cracked in the name of keeping the skulls beneath from doing the same, hurdles they hadn't jumped and notebooks they'd mostly filled up, often with pictures of cannons.
They'd brought out the past, and now it was pretending to let itself be put away.
All the work was done in silence, for the weight was pressing on them again, and it had pinned jaws shut. The pressure of poverty had been joined by that of failure, and Apple Bloom supposed that was a kick they should have been used to taking. But it felt different this time. It was like she'd been hit with every failure at once. Like she'd gone through all of it again in a single day, and...
She wanted to talk. But there weren't any words. Just three fillies trudging along in silence, moving through Ponyville with their full carts as the adults watched, probably looking to see if anything was about to explode. Trip after trip, as Sun was slowly lowered, with Apple Bloom feeling as if that heat was burning her from within.
By the time they made it back for the last trip (which was down to a single cartload), they were the last sellers in the market, not that they had the right to that title. The manager snorted when she saw them coming back, harshly reminded them to pack out their trash, and finally closed her booth for the new night. They had the town square to themselves.
The last of the work was done in silence under freshly-risen Moon.
"I thought we'd at least sell all of these."
Apple Bloom turned. Scootaloo was looking at the old newspapers.
"Remember when ponies were saying they wanted to get all the copies just so they could burn them?" Scootaloo asked, her voice half a sigh. "I guess gossip doesn't last long."
Apple Bloom said nothing, silently packed the last of the scarves. She wondered if her mouth would turn green.
"So we've got to wait on the fireworks," Scootaloo finally said. "Figures! Our best idea ever and now we've got to wait. Well, we'll find money somewhere! And until then, I bet there's a lot of marks we don't need money for at all! Actually..." Deep thought went across her face. "...there's marks for making money, right? But not more boring bank or business stuff, because who wants to do math and work on plans all day? Exciting marks!"
A long pause.
"What do you think about being a pirate?"
Sweetie started to say something and from the start of it, that response probably would have been a hesitant 'I don't know...' But the words never fully emerged, because Apple Bloom's overrode everything.
They were the hardest words of her life. They hurt. They burned and froze her in the same moment, just before they did what the Crusade had always done, the only feat it had ever accomplished at all.
"Ah don't want t' do this no more."
They ruined everything.
Unicorn and pegasus froze. For the latter, it never reached the jaw.
"...what?"
"Ah... can't, Scootaloo. It's been nearly three years now, three years. We started this 'cause a few other ponies in our class had their marks an' Ah didn't, then you two came with me, an'... now everypony's got their marks an' we don't. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's bein' with me that stops it, or maybe... we make things worse for each other, all the stuff we do, or -- maybe we're --"
The next word turned three years of her life into ash.
"-- wrong. Maybe we're wrong about how y'get a mark, Scootaloo. Maybe we've been wrong the whole time an' we'd have our marks already if we hadn't gone an' done -- everything. Every last --"
"-- you're tired." Scootaloo's words had been quick, and her breathing was even faster. "You're just tired, AB. We didn't sell anything all day, not one stupid thing, and that hurts because we have to wait. But you'll feel better after you sleep! You always do, and you'll have a new idea, maybe something better than being a pirate, not that I can think of anything because being a pirate's got to be the best thing there is, with the greatest mark --"
"-- Ah ain't a pirate. Ah don't know -- what Ah'm s'pposed t' be. Ah jus' know Ah've been tryin' t' work it out the one way for nearly three years, Scoots. Three years."
Sweetie's voice would have had to have been raised to reach a whisper, and yet they both still heard her. "App... Apple Bloom?"
"Gotta do it for a day because y'try," she slowly said. "Then y'go for a week 'cause iffin y'don't, y'wasted the day. Then it's a moon, lots of moons, and then when it's a year, it's gotta be more. We keep goin' an' goin' 'cause if we ever stop, then it means we wasted everything. An' we could just keep goin' til we're grown up, out of school, but we won't have jobs because we don't have marks and the only thing we can do is look some more. It's nearly three years an' if Ah do it for one more day, it could turn into... It's too much, an' Ah think -- it's been too much for a while. Too long. An' -- an' it ain't worth it no more."
"It's our marks!!!" The scream resounded through the square, bounced off the fountain and put ripples into the water. "Anything is worth a mark! Anything at all! If you just give up, if you never get it --"
Sweetie, forever afraid of confrontation, was automatically backing up: head low, tail almost completely between her hind legs. Afraid to look at them, afraid of what was happening...
"-- nopony bought off us! Most ponies won't even talk to us! The one pony who maybe, jus' maybe tried t' help all day was somepony Ah wouldn't talk to, an' -- maybe Ah messed that up too! We can't go in stores or shops or jus' 'bout anywhere 'cause ponies hate us! See all those bits an' pieces on the cart? How much of that belonged to other ponies? How much are we still payin' for? Ah paid with three years of makin' jus' 'bout everypony in town hate me! Ah don't know if Ah can ever fix that, 'cause nopony believes us when we say we're sorry! But the only way, the only chance Ah've got t' start -- is t' stop. Ah don't want t' do this no more! Ah'm --"
She felt them, just before they reached her tongue. She knew the shape of the words, and every part of her soul recognized that they could never be taken back. There was a single moment when she could have stopped it, and she did not.
"-- Ah'm out of the Crusade."
Two jaws dropped. She wished she hadn't noticed.
"Ah'm done. Ain't gonna sleep on it an' change mah mind. Ain't gonna be talked out of it. Ah jus' -- wanna go home. An' maybe when Ah wake up... Ah'll go tell ponies Ah'm sorry. Tell everypony. An' none of 'em will believe me, but Ah've got t' say it anyway, jus' 'cause Ah am this time an' at least Ah'll know Ah tried. An' --" The deepest breath she could manage, perhaps the only one. "-- Ah hope y'both come with, 'cause it's gonna hurt t' do alone."
"You're giving up."
It was rare, to hear Scootaloo's voice so soft.
"Ah have to. Ah think we all --"
"-- then you're not a Crusader," the pegasus cut her off. "And if you're not a Crusader, then why are we friends?"
Fire and ice met in the middle of her body, then shattered her heart.
"Scoots --"
She turned away. "Sweetie? You're still with me, right? You know we just need the right thing, it's just going to take the fireworks..."
"I," Sweetie Belle just barely managed. "I --" A desperate, fearful glance from one to the other. "I -- don't make me choose, please don't make me choose..."
They had her in the center. Perhaps one was fire and the other ice, or they could have just been lassos pulling in different directions. It didn't matter. All Apple Bloom knew was that she was hurting Sweetie, and she never wanted to do that. There might have even been a way to stop. All she had to do was tell Scootaloo that she'd been tired, made a mistake, a long day of dumb adults not buying anything had kicked her, she'd taken a breath and thought better of her words, she'd be ready to try again in the morning. Scootaloo might have believed that, because she would so badly want to believe it. And then Sweetie's pain would stop.
But to go that route was to potentially turn nearly three years into four and beyond.
It could be the next Crusade, which finally accomplished the goal. It could be the one after that, or whatever followed it, or their last pre-school gallop.
Or it could be never.
The Crusade existed in the now, because that was the way it could continue to exist at all.
Apple Bloom wanted a future.
"Sweetie?" The unicorn filly looked at her. "Y'haven't sung in... a while. Not even in private, jus' for us."
Visible shock at the topic change. "...so?"
"Why not?"
"...because -- when we were trying to raise money with caroling that one time before Hearth's Warming, Scootaloo said -- I didn't match the two of you, I was throwing off the harmony, and... if we don't match..."
Apple Bloom's eyes closed, because seeing hurt too much.
"Sing," she said. "Jus' -- sing. An' don't ever care 'bout the rest."
She turned, for there was only one cart left and anypony could take it. Earth pony strength wasn't needed.
(It occurred to her that there was a better way to hook up carts, but she didn't want to think about it just then.)
And the words kicked her from behind.
"If you trot away now," Scootaloo softly told her, "you can't come back."
Apple Bloom stopped, put that moment into memory. She had to remember. The only way into the future was to acknowledge what had led to the present -- including the second it all became the past.
"Ah know."
She trotted. And there was crying behind her, along with cursing, and some of that seemed to be surprisingly mixed, with the first part of it destined to be denied. But no matter what she heard, what pressed-down ears refused to fully block, she kept trotting. And she did say one last thing, not knowing if either had heard her, much less if one had cared to listen.
"If y'ever decide t' follow... Ah'll wait for you."
No words came in response, at least not any which showed caring. She forced her eyes open, looked at the road ahead, and headed towards home in search of a sibling coat she could weep into while wondering when and if the other would come home and receive her share of disbelieved apologies.
The Crusade had a cost, and Apple Bloom was no longer able to pay.
