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by Cackling Moron

Chapters

I laugh now
But later's not so easy
I've gotta stop
The will is strong
But the flesh is weak
I guess that's it
I've made my bed
And I lie in it
I'm still hanging on

I laugh now

Author's Note

The first slice of a big, weighty heap of nonsense.

I laugh now

“Jack.”

“Hnngh. Five minutes.”

“Jack, you have to wake up now.”

Curtains were pulled and sunlight filled the room. Such awful brightness was thoroughly unwelcome. Jack, groaning, rolled onto his front and shoved his face into the pillows. This helped.

“I know I know, five minutes,” he said, muffled. Twilight, being the one trying to get him out of bed, came up beside him and frowned hard. He couldn’t see this, but he was could guess she was doing it. He was pretty sure he could actually feel it prickling his skin.

“You said that five minutes ago,” he heard her say and this was so patently false he immediately turned his head to glare at her. How dare she lie to his face like that!

“That’s bullshit, I haven’t -,” he yawned, having to stop. “Oh man, I’m such a sleepy boy.”

Looking at Twilight through sleepy, bleary eyes he saw no trace of sympathy. So he closed his eyes and turned the other way, which was also luckily the way without the window and its horrendous, beautiful, gorgeous sunshine and light.

“Five minutes. For real. Just gimme a minute,” he said, yawning again and pulling the covers up tighter around him.

Without a word Twilight trotted out of the room and Jack allowed himself a minor thrill of victory as his mind started winding down again. He was already slipping back into something of a pleasant doze when there came the sound of hooves returning, the tinkle of magic and the rather quieter noise of something sloshing.

Being half-asleep, Jack did not pay too much attention to these things, and so when Twilight dumped a bucket of water over him it came as something of a shock. All sleepiness vanished immediately. There was now only moisture.

With a sigh Jack rolled and sat up, the beds creaking beneath him. Peeling sopping duvet away from himself with distaste he gave Twilight an especially level look.

“There’s a good reason you did that, right?” He asked.

“You told me to.”

Jack could not remember having done this.

“I did?”

“Yes. You said that if you didn’t get up and out of bed I was to dump a bucket of water on you. You were very, very specific about it being a bucket. It was my choice to make it cold water.”

A little bit was coming back to him now, about him having asked her to do it. Difficult to hold it against her when it had been her idea to start with. He couldn’t even really blame her for the coldness of the water. For one thing he probably would have done the same, for another he couldn’t really feel the cold anyway.

“Nice touch. Ice cubes and everything?”

“Yep,” Twilight said. Jack felt around the bed and found one, holding it up before him between forefinger and thumb. He gave it a squeeze and it cracked into fragments which, sticking to his fingers, started to melt. He brushed his hand on the duvet.

“Very nice. Well I’m definitely awake now, thank you.”

“You do actually have to get out of the bed though.”

“Ugh, fine. Jesus Christ…” Jack grumbled, swinging his legs out and - with a grunt - actually getting out of the bed though.

Or beds, rather.

Jack had three beds to sleep across now, being as how he was just too big to comfortably fit across two. He’d also had to have additional duvets, but that was a given.

Whatever unusual effect the roughing it in Equestria was having on Jack had not stopped on him leaving the Dragon Lands, though being provided with actual, prepared food - as opposed to rocks or whatever couldn’t get out of the way in time - seemed to slow the effect.

Or so he said at least, and so others tended to agree. Jack was continuing to grow, that much couldn’t be stopped it seemed, though now so slowly it was barely noticeable. So he said.

Though if you didn’t talk to Jack your opinion might have differed.

Twilight was still worried, of course, though whenever Jack asked her if she was she lied and said she wasn’t. Until she had answers she didn’t want to tell him otherwise. Twilight figured that if she told him she was worried he might start worrying too, and might do something unreasonable as a result. This wasn’t unwarranted on her part, she felt.

When Jack stretched - which he did on getting out of the beds - the amount he’d grown by became even more obvious. It made Twilight a little nervous. Made her worry something bad might be happening to him and that she might not have any idea what to do about it. Again, not that she’d tell him that.

Rolling his neck and cracking his knuckles he looked down at her just in time for her look of concern to disappear and a look of neutrality to return. He thought nothing of it.

“I didn’t tell you to do anything else unpleasant to me, did I?” Jack asked.

“You don’t remember?” Twilight asked, this time only internally concerned. Jack shrugged and shook his head, again yawning. He really was a sleepy boy.

“No, and I’m pretty sure I would, I just don’t really trust myself.”

“The bucket was it. You said you wanted to make sure you had as much day as possible to start making it up to everypony.”

This Jack considered and, on reflection, accepted. He nodded to himself.

“Yes, yes I remember that part. Ah! It’s all coming back to me, yes. Making amends, mending fences. Heh, amending fences... “

He wasn’t sure why that was so amusing to him. Probably just it’s punny nature. Jack was a cunt for a good pun, after all, which rather made Equestria an endlessly amusing place to be.

“But first a shower, I think. Can you give me five minutes?” He asked. The room he was in - his old rooms, the ones he’d been in after arrival and until his ‘episode’ - had en suite facilities. Very fancy. All crystal. The magic in some of the fixtures didn’t really work when he used them now, but that was fine. The water still ran so Jack wasn’t too fussed if he had to shower in the dark sometimes. It didn’t happen often.

“You’re very fond of five minutes, aren’t you?” Twilight asked, eyebrow raised. Jack raised an eyebrow right back at her.

“It’s a very useful little chunk of time! Or would you prefer I not shower?”

“Go, go. I’ll deal with this,” she said, gesturing towards the damp bedding.

“Ah, thank you kindly Twi, you’re a pal.”

Jack had to bend a little to give her mane a ruffle but he did it anyway because the occasion called for it. Twilight did her best to fend him off but her heart wasn’t in it and if either of them noticed that she was actually pushing into his hand as much as trying to push it away neither of them felt the need to point it out.

While Jack went off to shower Twilight did indeed busy herself with the bedding. Stripping three wet beds was not anyone’s ideas of a good time, but she could do magic so it worked out alright.

In the event, his shower took less than five minutes.

Jack emerged, still not completely dry, vigorously toweling himself off. So vigorously Twilight had to look away.

“Alright, I’m back and I’m reformed and I’m contrite - how do I go about actually demonstrating this to everyone? I have some ideas, but you probably have better ones because, well, I’m me and you’re you,” he said, dropping the towel and putting his hands on his hips.

“I’m sure your ideas are fine, Jack,” Twilight said warmly, taking great pains to keep her eyes above his waist. He looked down at her, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Twilight cleared her throat.

“...I did have some ideas of my own though,” she said, a hoof rubbing against her foreleg a little sheepishly. Jack grinned.

“That’s more like it, knew there was a reason I kept you around,” he said and Twilight rolled her eyes but found herself starting to grin as well.

“I put together a loose plan for you to-” She started to say only for Jack to interrupt:

“You’ve written out a whole plan? Does it have bullet points?”

Twilight bridled and whatever grin had been building went away again.

“I didn’t say I wrote it out! I mean, I have, but you shouldn’t assume. Besides, bullet points are useful! Do you have a problem with bullet points?”

“No no, I fully respect their usage, I’m sure they’re well-utilized in your plan. Integral, one could say.”

She could tell he was making fun of her but could also tell he wasn’t wholly serious in doing so and, besides, rising to it would only make it worse. Instead of making an issue of it Twilight took a breath, straightened out her mane and said:

“You are under no obligation to follow my carefully-prepared plan that I went to the trouble of putting together to help you.”

“Oh, I’m totally going to. I bet it’s real good, actually. Honest! Sorry about the bullet points thing. Really, hit me with the plan, I want to do this right,” Jack said. Twilight eyed him for signs of duplicity or piss-taking but he seemed serious enough. This eyeing up Jack noticed.

“I can tell you’re trying to work out if I’m fucking with you or not but honestly, Twilight, I’m super-grateful for your help and, well, your everything actually. Even for the bucket. Just point me in a direction and tell me what I got to do and I’ll do it. You got this down pat, I bet.”

His earnest sincerity put a smile on Twilight’s face. A smile that very quickly disappeared again when he added:

“Will there be a pillory? Because I could handle that, easy.”

“Jack…” she said, warningly.

“It was a joke! A joke!” He said.

Both of them counted off the beats in their heads, knowing that more was coming. Jack couldn’t help himself, and Twilight knew it.

“...doubt you guys have a human-sized one anyway,” he said. She sighed.

“And there it is. Got that out your system?”

“Yes,” Jack said, nodding emphatically.

“Good, now, I’m not going to show you the plan - I was going to, but now I’m not - because you’ll just make fun of it,” Twilight said.

Jack could not argue with this.

“That’s fair,” he said.

“So for now I’ll just take you through it. I think probably the ones you need to make it up to most are the Apples,” Twilight said and Jack spluttered.

“What? Why? What did I ever do to them?”

“Stole from them. Several times. A lot of times, actually.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah. That. I forgot about that. Sorry.”

“It’s not really me you have to apologise to.”

“Well yeah, but still. I’ll say sorry to them, too, but I’m sorry for being a disappointment to you, too, you know.”

He genuinely was sorry, too. At the time, when he’d been doing the actual stealing he’d been able to avoid the guilt of stealing by just avoiding thinking about it altogether as he desperately tried (and failed) to get drunk. Now though there was no avoiding facts, and the fact was that seeing Twilight’s face on reminding him of his theft made him feel like shit.

Which, he imagined, was but a prelude to how he’d feel when he came around to making his actual apology to the actual people he actually stole from.

Jack squirmed at the very thought.

“You’re not a disappointment, Jack, or a burden or anything bad. You just made some rather odd choices and might have done some things that might have upset some ponies. But you’re going to make it better, aren’t you?”

“Damn straight I am,” he said, pounding a fist into his palm.

“Glad to hear it! First though - the first bullet point, if you will - is clothes.”

“Clothes?”

“Yes. Remember when you used to wear those? I think it’d be good for you to be in actual clothes again rather than a curtain or bits of wood or nothing. I think it’d make you feel better, too.”

“You guys are naked all the time. Most of the time, at least,” Jack said, somewhat defensively.

“You’re human, and from what you told me clothes are normal for you. When you first arrived you wore clothes all the time and seemed pretty happy. I’m not saying having clothes again is going to suddenly, magically make you happier or anything like that, but it couldn’t hurt. Might put you in a slightly better headspace.”

As though noticing for the first time that he’d been having this conversation stark-bollock naked Jack looked down at himself and frowned.

“Guess you have a point…”

He kept looking down at himself and the frown deepened.

“I’m a little bigger in the everything since I arrived though. Do I even still have clothes left here?”

Those clothes he had been wearing when he’d run madly in the Everfree for dubious, shortsighted reason had not lasted long amidst the branches and Timberwolf fangs, and he hadn’t arrived with many to start with in the first place.

“You don’t, not really, which is why we are going out,” Twilight said, pointing a triumphant hoof onwards. Jack followed the direction of where she was pointing - towards a wall - and didn’t really get it. At least not immediately.

“Out? What - oh, oh I get it. Rarity, right? Nifty thinking there, Twilight. You sure she’s up for that?”

“She’s made things for you before,” Twilight pointed out.

“True, but that was before I went off the deep end.”

“The whole point of this is that we’re moving past that, Jack, remember? I’m your friend, Rarity’s your friend, we’re all friends and friends help one another out. Just...put on a sheet and let’s go.”

“Righto, chief,” Jack said, giving a small salute and fumbling around for something to wrap around his lower portions. This led to him taking down one of the curtains, much to Twilight’s dismay, but she decided to just let it slide. There hadn’t really been anything else to hand, anyway.

But later's not so easy

“Twilight! How lovely to see you! To what do I - oh, oh my.”

Rarity’s chipper greeting tailed off somewhat when she worked out what it was that was casting the shadow across her doorstep and found herself looking up at Jack, blocking out the sunshine.

“Hello tiny Rarity,” he said, giving a tiny wave to a tiny Rarity who - at a bit of a loss for words - could naught but give a tiny wave back.

“Uh,” she said, fumbling, then clearing her throat and letting her composure reassert itself: “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Twilight didn’t say anything and instead looked to Jack, but Jack was looking at Rarity and waiting for Twilight to speak. Even coughing from Twilight failed to get anything done so she ended up having to bump into his leg, which was rather like bumping into a tree trunk. Got his attention, though.

“What?” He asked, looking down to find Twilight jerking her head towards Rarity. “Oh, right. Uh, Rarity, sorry to impose and sorry if I’m interrupting anything but would you mind maybe possibly making me something to wear? Don’t worry if it’s too much of a bother or anything.”

The more Jack spoke the more apologetic he sounded, wringing the curtain wrapped around his waist and only able to glance up at Rarity to try and gauge how his words were being received. For a big guy, he looked remarkably tiny at that moment.

Rarity smiling was rather like the sun breaking through the clouds, and his relief was palpable.

“It’s no bother at all! Come in, come in. I must say, I’ve rather missed working on something a touch more challenging and different,” she said, stepping aside and pulling the door fully open. Twilight went in first because Jack silently insisted, and he followed.

Jack had - with a few exceptions - always had to duck to get through the doorways of Equestria. Recently though he’d also had to start turning a little to the side to get through some of the narrower ones. The door to the Boutique was one such door, and he did it without thinking. Twilight noticed, though, and chewed on her lip.

“Where do I go?” Jack asked, peering around.

“This way,” Rarity said, leading on through a wide doorway into an attached room with mirrors. “There, if you’d be so kind,” she said, pointing to the raised portion of the floor surrounded by the mirrors.

Jack did as he was told, and noticed that he was too tall to actually see himself in the mirrors. Worse things had happened, he reckoned.

Rarity - who had trotted off to retrieve a notepad, pencil and measuring tape - came trotting back and stopped by Jack’s side, having to crane her neck a little now to look up at him properly. She’d put her glasses on, too.

“Now, what did you have in mind?” She asked and Jack, bewildered, turned to Twilight who was bringing up the rear.

“Uh, what did I have in mind?” He asked her. Twilight shrugged.

“You’ll be the one wearing them, you tell her.”

“Uh, just...stuff so I won’t be naked?” Jack ventured.

This didn’t give Rarity a whole lot to go on and she considered the problem silently for a moment or two, eyes narrowed as she took a few steps back to properly get Jack in view. Whether this gave her an inspiration was unclear, because what she came out with was:

“Rather like what you had when you and I first met?”

“Yes! Yes like that exactly. If you can remember.”

Jack barely, which troubled him a tiny bit before he shoved the worry right back down again and did his best not to think about it. Rarity, horn glowing, opened a drawer on the other side of the room and floated some papers over.

“I can. What’s more, I kept the designs from the last items I made for you.”

The last items having been a few more pairs of trousers and a few more rather plain t-shirts after the design of the one he’d arrived in, along with some other sundry items just so that he’d had more than one set of clothes. Sensible, all had agreed, and very well done thanks to Rarity.

“Ooh, smrt,” Jack said, nodding, impressed, and Rarity beamed. Twilight just appeared a little puzzled.

“Think you missed out a vowel there.”

“It was a joke, Twilight,” he said.

“Ah, I get it,” she said, not getting it.

“Your dimensions don’t appear to have changed overmuch, though measurements taken should still make any requisite alterations obvious, sizing the originals up will not be difficult,” Rarity said, having been busy consulting her previous designs while the other two had been talking - she had not really been paying attention.

“Damn Rarity, it’s like you do this for a living or something,” Jack said.

“Quite. Now if you’d be so kind as to hold your arms out for me, Jack.”

He did so, and Rarity flexed her magic to start on the measuring.

The moment the tape measure got within an inch or two of Jack whatever magic had held it snapped off and it fluttered to the ground, landing alongside her notepad and pencil, which had also dropped the instant the magic had gone. Rarity, horn sputtering, blinked in shock.

“Oh,” she said. Jack just chuckled.

“Hurr, antimagic.”

Rarity frowned at him and retrieved the tape measure, magic a little wobbly at first but quickly reasserting itself.

“If you knew that was going to happen you could have told me.”

“Forgot,” he said. No-one present believed this, not even him.

Perhaps over-optimistically Rarity tried the same thing again, with the same results. That time it took her two tries to levitate the fallen tape measure off the floor and she seemed a little woozy as a result.

“Oh my,” she said, draping the tape over her neck and putting a hoof to her forehead. “That’s rather more severe, isn’t it? That didn’t happen the last time we did this.”

“I’ve always thought of myself as a Pariah,” Jack said, adding: “Sorry.”

“It’s quite alright. We’re going to have to do this somewhat differently. Um, back in a moment!”

Rarity wandered off and out of the room.

“Pariah?” Twilight asked. Jack shrugged.

“Human reference. I make a lot of them.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“They kind of remind me of home,” he said, apologetically.

“Oh,” said Twilight, who could not come up with anything else to add to that.

Rarity wandered back into the room, bringing a not-insignificant stepladder with her which she proceeded to set up beside Jack. Once satisfied that it was set and stable she climbed it, the sight of which delighted Jack who could not fathom how a race of quadrupeds had ended up also inventing stepladders.

Or tape measures, for that matter. Or teacups. Or half the things they had invented.

Or saddles.

Probably not worth getting too caught up on, he reckoned.

“I haven’t had to do this in a long time!” Rarity said with a breathless laugh, wobbling slightly at the top until Jack steadied her.

“A misspent youth climbing ladders?” He asked, winking. Rarity actually winked back, and Jack’s delight only deepend.

“A lady couldn’t possibly say. Now, you’re going to have to help me here, Jack, just hold the tape where I tell you to,” Rarity said, tugging the tape measure off from her neck and taking it in her mouth, passing an end to Jack who took it.

“Can do,” he said.

“Twilight, could you be a dear and note down the measurements as I make them?” Rarity asked from atop the ladder.

Twilight - taking up Rarity pad and pencil - nodded with far more grit and determination than the situation demanded.

Once certain that Twilight was ready, Rarity looked to the task at hand.

“Could you be a dear, Jack, and just hold your hand there, please? A little higher - that’s good.”

Jack, as so often in his life, did as he was told and Rarity squinted at the end of the measure she was holding. How she was managing to do all this - maintaining balance while juggling a tape measure between mouth and hooves - was a mystery. Jack was deeply impressed.

“You’ve grown a fair amount since the last time I did this,” Rarity said.

This much was obvious to everyone, presumably Rarity was just surprised by how much Jack had grown. He saw a great opening and went for it:

“Wink,” said Jack, just about managing an actual wink at the same time. His first one earlier had been a fluke.

Rarity deigned not to respond this time. He could understand why. Instead she just rattled off a measurement to Twilight, who duly jotted it down.

It went on like this for some time. Rarity not being able to magically take measurements drastically slowed the pace at which she worked, though her concentration and dedication were immense and obvious. Twilight made notes, and Jack did his part by holding the tape where he was asked to and keeping his mouth shut.

After an excruciating number of minutes of going up and down the ladder and of wrangling a tape measure - and the less said about measuring the inside leg the better - it was done, and Rarity had what she needed.

“That was involved,” Jack said, draping the tape over Rarity’s neck again before lifting her back down to the floor. She squeaked at this, but after the surprise passed accepted it gratefully.

“It was, rather,” she said while doing her best to fix what parts of her mane had fallen out of place during the process, gratefully receiving the notepad from Twilight when she came in to pass it over.

“Can already feel the inspiration tingling up and down your spine?” Jack asked, stepping down from the raised, mirrored part of the room. This did very little to diminish his height, and he continued to loom over both of the ponies present.

“‘Inspiration’ isn’t exactly the word I would use, all things considered - I imagine that you’d prefer something - ergh - practical and hard-wearing?” Rarity asked. The last part came out as though the words themselves didn’t fit comfortably in her mouth.

“Well, you know me. I’m a rough-and-tumble kind of guy. But I also have no idea about what goes into what you do, so you do whatever think is best, Rarity. I bow to your considerable wisdom and experience,” he said, bowing. Rarity tapped a hoof to her chin.

“I’m sure there can be a compromise between practicality and fashion,” she said.

This did seem a likely possibility. Certainly, not impossible.

“Undoubtedly!” Jack said.

A general sense of wellbeing settled on the three of them as they meandered back into the first, main room of the boutique, drifting towards the door.

“I should have something ready for you in a little over an hour, I’d think, just to keep you decent,” Rarity said. Jack gave a whistle.

“An hour? That’s pretty fucking impressive, Rarity,” he said, but she waved it off.

“Well, it’ll just be something rough-and-ready - I can hardly bear to see you in that, uh, what is that?” She asked, waving a hoof at the curtain wrapped around Jack’s waist. He gave it a tug and pulled up a little tighter.

“This is a curtain,” he said.

Rarity wasn’t wholly sure what answer she’d been expecting, but this wasn’t it. Now that she looked at it she could see what it was, but that didn’t make it any more tolerable. She tried to put a brave face on things, though.

“Quite. Well, yes. Your actual new clothes will take a touch longer,” she said.

“How many things are you going to be making, just to ask? Roughly.”

The prospect of her dropping whatever it was she was doing to fill out a whole wardrobe for him made Jack uncomfortable. It was a bit too rich for his blood. Some jeans, sure, or whatever else she put together, but anything more than that seemed like a waste to him. Pearls before swine, hard-wrought fashion before some dickhead.

“Oh, enough,” she said, which answered nothing and only raised further questions. Jack got the distinct impression that trying to pin Rarity down to specifics would be a fool’s errand so he just sighed and shook his head. Generous pony, what could be done?

“Alright, so what’ll I owe you for all this?” Jack asked. Rarity bridled.

“Owe me indeed! This is a favour for a friend, Jack! One coming out of a rough patch and getting back onto his feet. Nothing owed!”

He’d seen this coming, but it still wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Hey, look, I like free stuff as much as the next guy but I don’t want you, you know, doing this when you could be doing something that’d pay. I ain’t got anything right now but I can work to get something to you. Come on. It’s just an IOU. You can even lowball it, take a hit if you want. Just something, anything.”

“I refuse,” Rarity said, turning up her nose with a ‘humph’. Jack had a feeling that he would not get very far by trying to press the issue and ruminated for a few moments for a possible solution. No good ones presented themselves, so he settled on a bad one:

“I’m going to sneak around in the middle of the night and leave a sack of money on your doorstep,” he said.

“Thank you for warning me ahead of time, darling, as now I know who to return any unexpected sacks of money to,” Rarity said with crushing sweetness, nose lowering and lashes fluttering. She was laying it on thick, but then again that was the point.

Jack blinked, opened his mouth, closed it again, raised a finger, thought about it some more and eventually said:

“...I am not going to sneak around in the middle of the night and leave a sack of money on your doorstep. It’ll be someone else who does that. A mystery person. And you should keep that money.”

“Of course, dear,” Rarity said. The level of sympathy she put into this sentence was the final nail in the coffin for any hope Jack might have had for paying her. If he’d had pocket he’d have shoved his hand into them and pouted. Given the absence of pockets he settled on just pouting extra-hard.

“This isn’t working out the way I hoped it would, Twilight,” He said, turning to her for support and seeing only that she was trying not to laugh. “Oh come on!”

“Sorry Jack, it’s just - well, you tried,” Twilight said, patting him on the leg reassuringly. He pouted some more before drawing himself up, determined and wagging a finger first at Twilight and then at Rarity.

“I’m not finished yet! Uh, Rarity, you got any chores you need doing? Jars opening? Things taken down off high shelves? Batteries changed in smoke detectors?”

“I’m quite sure I’m quite alright, thank you Jack,” she said. Jack’s shoulders slumped.

“Ugh, there’s no just winning with you people. Fine, I’ll accept this for now. But I’ll have my revenge one day.”

For a given value of ‘revenge’, obviously.

There wasn’t much else to add after this. Jack hung around by the door while Twilight and Rarity had a non-Jack related conversation that ended up running longer than either intended, eventually culminating in an agreement to meet up at some point in the near future.

“Sorry about that,” Twilight said as Jack held the door for you.

“You do have a life outside of me, as hard as that might be for me to believe,” he said, following close behind and nodding goodbye to Rarity as he did so.

Once back outside again in the fresh air and sunshine - there were some things Jack did rather like about Equestria, these being foremost amongst them - he stretched and rolled his neck. All that standing around for measuring hadn’t been the most fun of things.

When he was done with that he reached down beside him and groped around lightly until his hand found Twilight’s head, whereupon he ruffled her mane, much to her chagrin.

“Thank you again, by the way,” he said and Twilight paused briefly in fixing her hair to peer up at him and smile.

“You really don’t need to keep thanking me.”

He shrugged. Forever shrugging was Jack.

“Yeah. But I want to. Thanks.”

Jack tried reaching out to ruffle her again but Twilight was onto him this time and dodged out of the way. Jack grinned and so did she.

“It’s fine. Now, you want to grab breakfast or something?” She asked, jerking her head off in the direction of Ponyville proper. The two of them started walking.

“You know me, I’ll eat anything. Literally anything. Point at something, I’ll eat it,” Jack said. He wasn’t wrong, either.

“I was thinking maybe starting with something basic like toast and seeing if there was anything else available.”

This Jack considered, concluding:

“That would also work.”

Author's Note

Are you following this? I can't follow this.

I've gotta stop

Perhaps inevitably, the pair ended up at Sugarcube Corner.

They had floated the idea of returning to the Castle of Friendship - a name which Jack still could not say with a straight face - for breakfast, but mooted it, as going all the way back only to have to come back out to see Rarity again before too long seemed a bit pointless.

And so it was. Probably for the best.

Pinkie was, unsurprisingly, overjoyed to see them and it was only after she’d nigh-on crushed Twilight to death in a hug and been prised off of Jack’s leg that she calmed down sufficiently for an order to actually be placed.

Jack was not especially hungry, but that wasn’t unusual. He hadn’t been especially hungry at all over the last few days or, indeed, the last week or so. He nibbled, but that mostly just so he was seen to be doing something. The tea he drank - from a frankly enormous, practically barrel-sized mug the origins of which Pinkie seemed to suggest were of some dispute - was much more appreciated.

Twilight was hungry, and she just ate. Enthusiastically.

“Huh, wha?” She asked, noticing that Jack was staring. “Is there something on my face?”

He gestured to all of her.

“Just kind of everywhere,” he said, passing over a napkin, which she took rather bashfully. After cleaning herself up she continued eating, this time with rather more care and self-possession. Jack wished he hadn’t pointed it out. He’d found it rather cute before.

After this it was Twilight’s turn to stare, though her eyes were actually fixed on a point a little above Jack’s head. He frowned.

“Now what?”

“Uh…” Twilight said, pointing. Jack, now perplexed, looked up to see - having somehow missed this, somehow - Pinkie sitting on top of his head.

Curiously, it was not until Jack was aware she was there that he actually felt the weight of her, in much the same way that once his eyes had spotted her it was impossible not to notice that she was very clearly there. How any of this worked was unclear.

“Oh hi. Having fun up there?” He asked.

“Lots!” Pinkie said, nodding happily.

Jack felt no need to question her decisions further than this, and Twilight was still a little taken aback by his casual reaction and added nothing either. It was Pinkie who kept the conversation going:

“Soooooo, what you two up to today?” She asked.

“Twilight has a plan for me to make amends for my time being, uh, something of a public nuisance,” Jack said.

“That’s kind of a simplistic way of putting it…” Twilight said, though not especially loudly.

“Ooh. You were a nuisance?” Pinkie asked, bending over to look Jack in the eye when she asked.

Given that Pinkie had personally assisted Twilight at least once on something that had been directly Jack’s doing - concerning a certain jailbreak, which in retrospect had perhaps been a little melodramatic - Jack wondered what she defined as a nuisance. Perhaps she was simply being obtuse, perhaps she had simply forgotten. Who could say?

He felt it best to just let it slide.

“That’s the common consensus. And my own personal opinion. Got some bad behaviour to make up for. Did I ever do anything bad to you?” He asked, trying to look up at her but not getting very far. Pinkie rolled over onto her back atop his head and thought about this question, maintaining her balance perfectly.

“Hmm,” she said. “Hmmmm.”

This she repeated, rising in pitch and length until it was beyond the range of human hearing.

Pinkie’s head then flopped upside down, her mane hitting Jack in the face.

“Nope, don’t think so,” she said.

“Glad to hear it.”

Jack then reached up and rubbed her belly, instantly reducing Pinkie to a flopping, writhing mass of giggles that still somehow managed to not fall off his head. He even tried tipping her off, just to see what would happen, still she stayed there in defiance of reason itself.

It was only a bell ringing that brought it to a halt, her head snapping up and ears swivelling the moment the door opened.

“Ooh! Customers!” She chirped.

Somehow and in a way that no-one properly saw, Pinkie slid down the back of Jack’s head, disappeared from view and - without seeming to actually cross the room - popped up from behind the till. This passed without comment, though Jack did shake his head as he reached again for his teacup.

“Is it weird that Pinkie can still do all her stuff when I’m around but you guys can’t levitate a spoon if I’m resting a hand even an inch away from you? I think Rarity nearly fell over earlier.”

The full effects, limits and other specifics of Jack’s peculiar effect on magic had not been given a particular or proper examination, because it was something that everyone - himself included - preferred to just sort of pretend wasn’t there.

Apart from those times when it could be leveraged for comedic purposes, of course. Rest of the time - out of sight, out of mind.

“I wouldn’t say weird, I’d just say...Pinkie,” Twilight said, unable to come up with any better explanation.

“So it’s not magic, I take it?”

“No, it’s not magic,” Twilight said with the look and tone of someone who’d gone to dark places to have this confirmed.

“Clearly she simply obeys different rules to the rest of you. Stranger things have happened,” Jack said.

“They’re not meant to though! Rules are rules for a reason!”

Twilight evidently had strong feelings about this. Jack just sipped his tea to block his grinning.

“What about what’s happening to me?” He asked, innocently enough.

This question was not received by Twilight with the same amount of levity and light-heartedness with which Jack had delivered it, and her mood dipped sharply and immediately.

“...I just haven’t figured that out yet. But I will. Trust me, Jack, I’ll figure it out,” she said.

The crestfallen way she said this - along with the look on her face - skewered Jack right in the heart and he hurriedly set his teacup down to reach across the table and take one of her hooves in his hand. Rarely had Twilight looked smaller to him than at that moment. Her hoof basically disappeared in his hand. Not that she minded.

Jack did. He lowered his hand a little so the size difference between them looked a little less egregious. It had made him somewhat uncomfortable.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said.

“I will figure it out, Jack. Trust me,” Twilight said, putting her other hoof onto his hand and looking him in the eye. Very determined she was, too. Jack nodded.

“I know you will. And even if - you know - things don’t work out and it stays a mystery we’ll always have each other, right? Millstones around each other’s necks and all that?”

That put something of a smile back onto her face, albeit a slightly wan one.

“Oh you’ll never get rid of me,” she said. Jack scoffed with a level of theatricality that likely would have made Rarity proud.

“She makes it sound like a bad thing!” He said.

More of a smile from Twilight and less wan to boot. Neither of them said anything after that because they didn’t really need to. They just smiled, because they couldn’t really help it.

Then a hint of movement caught their eyes.

Pinkie rose slowly and smoothly from somewhere indeterminate below the level of their table, wide eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them. She said nothing, but her conspiratorial expression smoke volumes.

Jack pulled his hand away from Twilight and Twilight was suddenly interested in looking anywhere that wasn’t the table.

“Need something, Pinkie?” Jack asked, unable to find anywhere to put his hands and settling on sitting on them. Pinkie shook her head.

“Nuh uh.”

“Just going to kind of stand there being a little creepy?”

“Yuh huh.”

He gave her a pat on the head. She squeaked, beaming ear-to-ear.

“That’s great. You do you.”

“My, look at the time! We should probably go see Rarity,” Twilight said with what might have been a laugh or a choke, pointing to a clock that Jack had singularly failed to notice owing to it being sat right behind him. Craning his neck over his shoulder to look he realised this was the first moment so far he’d actually had any inkling what the time was.

It was earlier than he’d expected it to be.

“Oh, oh yeah, yeah, right,” he said. “Yep, definitely. Stuff to do, places to be.”

“Aww,” Pinkie said, lip wobbling. Jack held his hand up in front of her face so he didn’t have to suffer the sight, it was simply too much to bear. Pinkie just rose so that she was over his hand. How she did this was, as always, something of a mystery.

“Goddamnit woman,” Jack said, averting his eyes. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“You didn’t finish your breakfast!”

Indeed, sitting in front of him was most of a muffin - what he had considered an acceptable choice for breakfast. As with most Equestrian baked goods the thing was of considerable size, being roughly approximate to Pinkie’s head.

“Uh, I wasn’t super-hungry,” he said. This was true, but this was greeted only by more lip wobbling and Jack felt his resolve crumbling. He’d never had a whole lot of resolve to begin with. Grunting he grabbed the thing and started wolfing it down, aware of the time.

“How you guys stay so tiny I have no idea…” He said between bites, doing his best to avoid Pinkie’s scrutiny while he ate. In doing so he noticed Twilight staring again.

“What?” He asked after swallowing.

“And you said I was messy,” she said lightly, smirking.

“I didn’t say it, I just implied it.”

“Well, there you go.”

Jack concentrated on finishing the muffin. He gave serious consideration to eating the plate as well just to really go the distance but imagined - probably correctly - that Twilight would not approve of this. So instead he just held the empty plate up for Pinkie’s inspection.

“Happy now?”

Pinkie turned the plate over in her hooves and looked at it closely, holding the thing barely inches from her eye. She even looked at the underside, as though Jack might have hidden something there. At length she was satisfied, putting the plate onto her back for return and washing and giving Jack a nod.

“Great. Very nice, by the way. Compliments to the baker.”

“That’s me!”

“It is?” Jack said, holding a hand to his mouth in shock. Pinkie giggled and Twilight giggled too, though hers cut off rather quickly and she tugged on the curtain around his waist. Jack got the point, waved goodbye and followed Twilight out the door.

“That didn’t feel like an hour or so,” he said, squinting up at the sun. Doing this told him little and also meant he had to hustle to catch up to Twilight, who hadn’t stopped walking.

“I must have lost track of time,” she said.

Jack couldn’t really argue with that.

They arrived back at Rarity’s early. Despite this, she was still basically done anyway.

What Rarity had made - in record time! - amounted to a fairly loose, fairly short pair of trousers and some style of poncho-thing, both made from a material that might have been linen in another life but was here instead somewhat closer to hessian.

Why she’d had such material to hand (or hoof, Jack supposed) was anyone’s guess.

Still, he thought they were marvellous and leapt into getting changed so quickly both Rarity and Twilight barely had enough time to look away.

“Check me out! I’m modest!” Jack declared upon finishing changing, rushing over to a mirror to give himself a proper checking out.

He didn’t like what he saw because what he saw was himself, but it was a damn sight better than the last time he had to look in a mirror because this time he wasn’t half-naked and wearing a curtain.

“Great stuff, Rarity,” he then said, giving her a boisterous thumbs up.

“You’re very kind. It’s awfully rough, I’m afraid. It was difficult finding sufficient fabric you see, and-”

“Hush with your self-deprecation, lady, these are fantastic. Look at this! Look how casual I look!”

Jack gave the poncho a few swishes. “I’m like Pacha. Only without the hat. Or llama buddy, sadly. This is great.”

“Hat?” Rarity asked, afraid that maybe she’d missed some key component of human clothing that she had been hitherto unaware of.

“Llama?” Twilight asked, wondering why Rarity hadn’t latched onto what she felt was the more important part of what Jack had said.

“Nevermind. Thanks for this, Rarity.”

He reached down to give her a pat, too, but thought better of it and instead just held his fist out to her. Rather daintily she bumped it, seeming to think the gesture novel, at least coming from him.

“Think nothing of it, Jack. As I said this is just for now! The proper finished articles will be much better, I assure you.”

“I’ll be floored, I’m sure. Get one of those couches of yours ready when I come here next, I’ll need it.”

“Oh you!” She said, batting at hoof at him.

“No, you!” He said, batting a hand at her.

“...are you two done?” Twilight asked flatly, watching all of this transpire.

“Oh you, Twilight!” Both Rarity and Jack somehow managed to say in perfect unison. It took Twilight a couple seconds to recover from this.

“Urgh…”

Jack and Twilight did leave after that, however, Jack continuing to revel in his new clothes. He was enjoying them far more than he’d suspected he might, and these were just the stopgaps!

It was the little things, sometimes.

“Okay, I’ll admit this is pretty good, I’m liking this. Your plan is solid, Twilight. Not that I ever doubted it for a moment, obviously,” he said.

“Obviously.”

“So what’s next?”

“Well, it’s still early and I did say to Applejack that we’d go and talk to her today about what she had in mind for you.”

“She has something in mind?” Jack asked.

“She has something in mind,” Twilight repeated. Jack grimaced.

“That’s ominous.”

“It’s nothing bad, I’m sure. I thought you had faith in my plan?”

“I do, I do! Deep and abiding faith. Fret not, Twilight, I’ll do what needs doing. Let’s get to it! This way, right?” Jack asked, pointing and setting off at the same time. Twilight pointed the other direction.

“That way,” she said and Jack deep an abrupt one-eighty as though it wasn’t that big of a deal, walking right past her, arm still out and pointing.

“That way, right, I knew that. Come on Twilight, time’s a-wasting.”

Author's Note

What a fucking mess.

The will is strong

The walk to Sweet Apple Acres was scenic, uneventful and quiet, the upshot of which was to give Jack plenty of time to dwell on what Applejack might possibly have waiting for him once they got there.

“Seems a little late in the day for farmwork to me,” he said aloud once the place itself finally hove into view.

Not that Jack was an expert by any means, but his whole impression of farms and those that worked on them was that you either had to get up and get going before the sun or else you’d wasted a day. He was probably a little bit off in this.

“It might not be farmwork,” Twilight pointed out and Jack just gave her an odd look.

“I find that very difficult to believe. At the least I suppose it’d be good to, ah, ‘touch base’, as they say.”

“Who says that?”

“I...don’t know.”

It was just one of those things that Jack had always heard second-hand. Presumably someone out there actually said it, but he’d certainly never met them. And likely never would.

No great loss.

Actually entering the property through the actual gate was refreshing, as the last few times Jack had been here he had come in over the fence. Doing it while the sun was up was pretty different, too.

“This place looks a lot nicer during the day,” Jack observed. Twilight made no comment.

Fortunately for them they managed to catch Applejack while she was having a quick drink in the shade of the barn between chores and, waving, headed on over to her.

“Hello Applejack,” Twilight said, moving in for a hug. Jack stood awkwardly off to the side, fidgeting.

“Hello Twilight,” Applejack said, pleasantly enough, inclining her head. Her face then took on a particularly grim cast as her attention fell on Jack. “Jack.”

As adorable as she was - and, being a pony, she was pretty damn adorable - she was also plainly not exactly filled with happiness on seeing him. Given the circumstances of his previous visits this was understandable.

Twilight gave Jack another bump to get him going.

“Ah, hello Applejack. You’re looking to be in fine form. Trees look good. Apples are, uh, bountiful?” He said. He probably should have thought about this a little harder first.

She made no response. Jack swallowed.

“I’m, uh, yeah. Sorry for breaking in those times and stealing that apple juice of yours. It was good, by the way. Not that you, ah, probably want to hear that but, uh, yeah. It was.”

He swallowed again and Applejack continued to bore a hole through him with her eyes. Her ability to hold off from blinking was alarming. Jack shuffled his feet and cleared his throat and scratched his neck and plunged on:

“I really am very sorry. I’ll say that, and apologies are always kind of flat, but I do mean it. And I’ll do whatever you feel appropriate to try and make it up to you guys, really.”

Jack’s personal stance on apologies was that the best way of saying sorry was never actively doing anything that warranted apologising for in the first place, but he was well aware that life wasn’t ever as clean as that. That, and he also understood the value of contrition to some people.

Applejack continued giving him the hard stare a moment or so, but it then softened.

“Well we’ll see how you feel about that once you’re started. For now though, apology accepted, Jack,” she said and Jack practically melted on the spot out of relief. The tension had been unbearable!

“Honestly? I can apologise more, really. I didn’t damage the place too much when I came in those times, did I?” He asked, hands wringing.

The more Jack dwelt on it the worse he was feeling, and the relief of being so easily forgiven immediately jackknifed into a sense he’d got off lightly. Jack’s mood could often turn like this, he’d found. Likely something everyone had to deal with.

“Nothing we couldn’t fix,” Applejack said. Jack was appalled.

“That makes it sound like I did!”

Jack likely would have continued had Applejack not seized control of the conversation.

“Listen - what’s done is done. You’re back now is the point, so let’s go from there, okay?”

This she said with such firmness that it was obvious to all that the matter was closed. Jack sighed. Defeated again by tiny, pleasant, stubborn horses. He tugged the bottom of the poncho-thing.

“If you’re sure,” he said.

“I am. Now, time’s a-wastin’, come on.”

“She said it too!” Jack mouthed to Twilight, pointing down at Applejack as he followed behind. Twilight just rolled her eyes.

They followed her away from the barn and across towards a fence, thence followed beside the fence to wherever it was that Applejack had in mind.

“Alright, so what we doing today? That weird tree-kicking apple-picking thing? I can do that. Just point me at a tree and I’ll fuck it up,” Jack said, feeling infinitely better about things than he had some seconds previously.

“Please don’t fuck up the trees, Jack,” Twilight hissed out of the corner of her mouth, a rictus smile of forced politeness on her face. As was known to Jack - and to Twilight on account of him having boasted of it - when Jack disagreed with trees, trees had been known to explode.

Surprisingly, Applejack smirked.

“He may not be far wrong, actually.”

“What?” Twilight asked, unable to mask her shock. Jack just pumped a fist.

“Fucking yes,” he said.

Applejack came to a halt besides a gate and turned back to the other two.

“There’s some hard work needs doing and it ain’t anything to do with apple bucking. What we got is new land that needs clearing for trees,” she said.

“New land?”

This was news to Twilight, who was being steadily reduced to someone who could only ask confused questions in response to fresh information.

“Yup. Know Old Mr Shergar? Owns that parcel of land that abuts the southernmost field? Old Mr Shergar is - well, surprise surprise - gettin’ on a little and says that land is a bit too much for him to look after these days. He’s agreed to let us take the land off his hooves an’ - you alright there, Jack?”

She asked this because Jack had doubled over laughing.

“Old Mr Shergar! That’s amazing. Holy shit that’s a deep reference. Did I die? Am I dead? Is this my heaven? Oh man!”

He trailed off into chuckles and had to take a knee he was sniggering so much. Applejack and Twilight had a moment of shared mystification before Applejack continued:

“...right. Anyway, Old Mr Shergar weren’t the best at keepin’ his land in good condition if you catch my drift, and if we want to put that land to use - and we do - we ‘gon have to clear it out first. That’s where Jack comes in.”

Jack heard his name and glanced up.

“Ooh, land clearance! I can do that. I’ll opening-days-of-Harvest-Moon the shit out of anything you need me to,” he said, standing again.

“I don’t rightly know what that means but we got rocks that need breaking and trees that need felling - reckon you’re up to do that?”

“You bet your sweet-ass hat I’m up for that. I’m up, down and every which way, just turn me loose.”

Jack’s barenaked enthusiasm for productive destruction was enough to actually get a small laugh out of Applejack

“Ah’m glad to hear it!” She said.

“It okay if I leave this here?” Jack asked, shucking off the poncho-thing and moving to drape it over the fence and then going through with draping it when Applejack nodded to him. He figured it would be a shame to ruin it so soon, and had a feeling smashing rocks to bits was the sort of thing that would ruin most clothes. The trousers would just have to live with it.

“Right, Now what?” He asked clapping and rubbing his hands together briskly.

“We got a pickaxe here for ya,” Applejack said, nodding to the pickaxe in question, which was resting against the post of the gate they’d halted beside. It was like a pickaxe, only hilariously small compared to Jack, who frowned at it.

“I was just going to use my hands if it’s all the same to you. They work pretty well for me,” he said, cracking his knuckles with a sound like branches being ripped off a tree.

“Jack, I’d prefer if you used the pickaxe,” Twilight said, piping up. He gawped at her a second and made to try and protest but she was staring him down before he’d even opened his mouth and so whatever he might have liked to have said just came out as mumbles.

Keeping his eyes down he took the pickaxe. In his hand it looked almost dainty.

“Feel like I’m going to break this damn thing…” he grumbled. “Where to?”

With a light kick - Applejack had a repertoire of kicks all tuned to achieve specific purposes, she just never told anyone - opened the gate and it swung smoothly out of the way.

“Through this gate and thataway. You’ll know when you get there - it’s the place that’s a mess an’ Big Mac’ll be there already,” she said, pointing off and away. Jack squinted in the sun, shielding his eyes, seeing nothing but getting the idea.

“Cracking. Right, well, best get on. Let’s be farmers, eh? Ooh arr.”

Hefting his miniature pick Jack gave a salute and then went marching off, leaving Twilight and Applejack to do whatever it was they were planning on doing in his absence. Hijinks, possibly. Or a pillow fight. Who knew?

Bic Mac was indeed already there along with a wagon he’d apparently brought with him. But that wasn’t what really got Jack’s attention. What got Jack’s attention was the lacklustre condition the new land was in.

“Ye Gods. Look at this! Was this guy an aspiring rock farmer or something?” He asked after wandering over to Big Mac. He tried counting the rocks present, but quickly gave up.

“Yup,” said Big Mac.

“What? He was? That’s a thing? I was joking!”

Big mac just shrugged and kicked a nearby boulder, splitting it neatly down the middle before somehow managing to kick a half of it into the wagon. The physics of this defied Jack’s human understanding so he just ignored it and set to work himself.

As Jack had predicted the pickaxe did not last long, or at least the handle didn’t. A few very enthusiastic swings from Jack saw the wood split and the handle snap in half. From then on he - rather red-facedly - took to just holding the thing by the head and smashing rocks like that.

Surprisingly, it worked pretty well.

Quickly Jack and Big Mac worked out between the two of them an efficient division of labour. Jack broke the rocks up and loaded the pieces into the wagon which Big Mac then hauled off, taking them away to parts unknown and returning with the wagon emptied just when Jack had more pieces ready to load. In this fashion they got a lot of shit done in not a whole lot of time.

Jack also got to punch at least one tree that was in the way, with spectacular, splinter-rific results.

“Okay, maybe I won’t do that again,” he said to himself as he picked bits of tree out of his slightly ruined new trousers and also his flesh, which appeared far less damaged than it ought to have been.

For the next few trees - for there were only a few, having grown unmolested thanks to Old Mr Shergar’s neglect - he used the axe that Big Mac had brought along in his wagon, at least until it looked as though he was going to break that, too. After that he just took to uprooting the trees by hand with Big Mac’s help. Not especially subtle, but it worked.

The place got cleared up pretty damn quick and they were basically all but done before the sun had even started dipping. Being freakishly, terrifying strong had some positives sometimes.

Deciding they’d earned a break Big Mac returned with his empty wagon and also some actual, bonafide cider in two hefty wooden mugs, one of which he passed to Jack.

“Earned it, this time,” he said.

“Okay, I deserved that,” Jack conceded, tapping the mug against Big Mac’s before downing the contents in one, smacking his lips in satisfaction and gazing out at the results of their work, wiping sweat from his brow and scratching his temple with the head of the pickaxe.

“Shit man, we’re making record time, this is great,” he said, grinning fit to burst. Big Mac said nothing but did nod and - Jack noticed - he was grinning too.

Then out of nowhere an idea popped into Jack’s head. It was so out of the blue it caught him completely off-guard and he was entirely unable to resist it. It just appeared, and he was compelled to act upon it. He had no choice!

“Hey! Big Mac! Kick me in the head!” Jack said.

Big Mac’s grin did not survive this statement.

“...what?” He asked.

“Come on, man, we’re way ahead of schedule and I’m curious. Kick me in the head. Just once! It’ll be fine.”

Jack knew this wasn’t a great idea but was worked up enough not to really care. That, and he didn’t care in the first place, so what with being so worked up he now really didn’t really care.

In all likelihood getting kicked in the head would sting a little and he’d walk it off. He had, after all, been eaten by a dragon more than once before and walked that off, so what was a little kick in the head?

And if it worked out more serious than that? Well, no great loss, right?

“I ain’t so sure that’s a good idea, Jack,” Big Mac said, glancing around for Applejack - or, even better, Twilight - because they’d probably have a better idea of how to handle Jack at a time like this. Alas, neither of them was anywhere to be seen.

Jack stepped closer, tossing what remained of the pickaxe to one side.

“Course it’s not a good idea, son, it’s a dumb idea! But It’ll be fine. I’m a tough boy! Come on!”

“I really don’t know-”

“Do it! Do it! Just once! Come on, man! It’ll be fun! Come-”

Big Mac panicked. Having Jack bearing down on him was one thing. Having Jack bearing down on him while spouting crazy and increasingly aggressive-sounding nonsense was quite another, and certainly nothing he had been prepared for.

So he panicked, and this panic took the form of turning and bucking Jack in the face.

There was a crack, and where before Jack had been walking forward he was now sailing backwards, neither feet touching the ground. He hit the dirt arse-first, arms and legs trailing. His forceful journey carved a furrow out of the mud for some considerable distance and left him in a tangled, awkward heap at the end of it which took a second or two to get out of.

Jack, laughing, got back to his feet, only swaying in place briefly a moment before shaking off the aftereffects. There was a distinct, horseshoe-shaped mark on his face, but nowhere near what he deserved from what he’d just got.

“I can’t believe you actually did it! Oh that’s got to be some animal instinct in there, whoo. Oh you’re a pal, Mac. Whoo! That was a good one! Some real cartoon shit. Look at this furrow! Amazing. Ah, anyway. Back to work I guess,” he said, knocking some mud off his trousers and heading to retrieve the pickaxe head while Big Mac stared at him in alarm, mildly horrified at what he had just done without even really meaning to.

“Are you okay?” He asked. Jack frowned. What an odd question to be asked.

“Me? Fine, fucking fine. I’m indestructible, haven’t you heard?”

To better demonstrate this he whacked the side of the pickaxe head against his skull. The metal went clang, his skull went thunk. Big Mac winced.

“You sure?”

For some reason that probably warranted greater introspection than it got, this question really got under Jack’s skin. Had he not just hit himself over the head with a pickaxe? Was this not proof enough?

“Kick me again!”

“I really don’t-”

“Again! I bet we can go even further this time!”

There was a rational part of Jack’s brain that was calmly trying to explain that this was all a terrible idea and trying to lay out the reasons why he needed to reel it in, but that part wasn’t in the majority. The majority, for some reason, really wanted to get kicked again. Jack wasn’t one to question why this might be the case.

Big Mac licked his lips and swallowed, continuing to look around in the increasingly forlorn hope that someone else might come and defuse the situation. Again, no-one did.

“W-well, if you’re sure…” he said, himself sounding anything but sure.

“Never been surer. Right here, man, right here,” Jack said, tapping a finger to his belly.

The second kick - not being delivered in panic - was nowhere near as forceful and Jack didn’t even fall over, though he did stagger back.

“Hmm,” Jack said, looking down at his gut, dissatisfied. “That wasn’t as good. You were holding back.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Big Mac said, reasonably enough. Jack blew a raspberry.

“Man, I’ve been set on fire, I think you’d have trouble hurting me.”

“Still, I reckon we should probably finish first, huh?” Big Mac said, giving a nod to what few rocks still remained in the field. Jack considered arguing the point, but whatever manic energy had driven him to such poor decisions mere moments ago deserted him, leaving him bereft. He sighed.

“Yeah, yeah I guess you’re right.”

And so it was.

Roundabout the time they were loading up the remains of the very last rock, Applejack came strolling up, presumably to check on progress only to find all progress had been made. This was a very good thing, and quite unexpected, so she was approaching smiling.

“Lookin’ good, boys, you two are really - “

She stopped, because Jack had given her a wave and she’d noticed the two very obvious horseshoe prints on his person. The smile went away.

“What in the blue blazes happened?!”

“‘Blue blazes’?” Jack repeated before giggling quietly to himself. It seemed an overreaction to him.

Following closely behind Applejack though was Twilight, who appeared to be no-more pleased than her friend.

“Jack! What did you do?” She asked.

Now Jack actually looked worried, his face falling. Why’d she have to put it like that?

She was right, clearly, but still. Why’d she have to be so right so quickly?

“Uh, what are you talking about?” He asked, taking refuge in audacity. As one, both Twilight’s and Applejack’s eyes fell to the somehow more prominent bruise on his belly, and both of them pointed. No getting away from this.

“It was an accident. I mean, it was my fault. I did it. Whatever it is you’re seeing here and are mad about, I did it. My fault,” he said, tapping a finger to his chest. This convinced no-one, and so Twilight and Applejack’s attention shifted to Big Mac.

“It was an accident,” Big Mac said, also convincing no-one. Applejack’s eyes narrowed. Jack interposed himself between the two siblings, attempting to redirect the ire back onto himself where it belonged.

“I’m not kidding, it was me, alright? I wanted to get kicked in the head and so that’s what happened. Gut too, I guess.”

As far Jack was concerned the second hadn’t really counted, but he imagined it was the sort of thing they’d feel he was leaving out on purpose if he didn’t mentioned it. Applejack muttered something while Twilight just goggled.

“You what?” She asked, continuing her streak of questions.

“I don’t know. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, it didn’t, but I just kind of wanted it to happen, and Mac just kind of...reacted. It wasn’t his fault.”

They were looking at Jack as though he’d lost his mind, and not without good reason.

And only then did Jack properly, fully notice just how powerfully uncomfortable Big Mac looked, and the bottom fell out of his stomach.

“Shit. Shit shit shit, what was I thinking? Ah, fuck, I’m sorry. Shit, man, here I am trying to make things up and I just made it worse. I’m sorry. I should - maybe I should have just stayed away.”

So obvious now! So easy to avoid! What had he been thinking indeed?

The urge to just run away again was very strong, but that hadn’t worked out so great last time. Best to just keep on forward. Better to stick around and talk things through. If Jack had learnt anything from his time in the wilderness it was this.

That, and he could jump really high. He’d also learnt that.

The ponies were no longer looking at him as though he’d lost his mind, which was good. They were instead looking at him with something approaching pity, which was bad.

“Maybe we rushed the plan. This could probably have waited until tomorrow. It’s okay, Jack,” Twilight said, stepping over and giving his knee a reassuring rub. It was just the first bit of him she had within reach.

“It’s really not okay. There’s something wrong with me, I think. Well, more than the obvious. Think I’m a little mixed up,” Jack said, shrugging helplessly and going quiet. A second or so later adding: “Oh, and I broke your pickaxe too, Applejack. Sorry. It just snapped in my hand.”

Jack held up the remains of the pickaxe to demonstrate this. Where the handle had ended up was anyone’s guess.

“It’s alright,” Applejack said. Jack had the powerful impression she was saying this solely for his benefit. He decided this with no real evidence, but it felt compelling to him right at that moment, and lowered his mood further.

What had been going rather well had taken a sudden and sharp turn towards the decidedly sour.

“Are you finished clearing up?” Twilight asked Jack who nodded, his eyes on his feet. “Alright, good. You did a good job. Let’s go back to the castle.”

“If it’s all the same to you I’m just going to sit down for a second. Get some quiet, calm down. I think I - I’m really sorry, you guys. I don’t know what came over me. I just - I don’t know…”

Jack continued to stare at his feet while the ponies had a hurried, silent discussion mostly conducted through half-understood facial expressions. The generally accepted gist was that none of them knew how to handle the situation but that Twilight was the one who felt she had to take charge.

“That sounds fine, Jack. Just don’t disappear, okay? I’ll meet you back at the castle.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going off again. I just - yeah. Little quiet, I think. I’ll see you back at the castle. Sorry, Mac.”

He then picked a random direction and jumped in it. This was rather more violent than it sounded on the face of things, as Jack really putting some effort into a jump resulted in him leaving a small crater behind.

The crater he made on landing was somewhat bigger. Picking himself up and dusting himself down he wandered a little to pick out a spot to sit and stare into space.

Author's Note

How unnecessarily melodramatic.

But the flesh is weak

The tree he found was a pretty great place for sitting. For one it had shade, which counted for a lot. For another, it was very quiet and very still. This also counted for a lot, as while Jack disliked being alone with this thoughts as much as the next man, sometimes you just couldn't beat some good old-fashioned solitude to calm the nerves.

It also had a lovely big root sticking up out of the ground he could perch himself on, which was just convenience itself. It was even about the right height for someone of Jack’s size. Couldn’t have been more perfect if he’d designed the thing himself.

“‘Hey! Big Mac! Kick me in the head!’ What the fuck was I thinking…” he grumbled to himself, rubbing his eyes with the heels both palms. “Idiot. Something wrong with you, man. Need to pull yourself together.”

Jack felt pretty rotten, and also felt that by dwelling on it he was just digging himself deeper into a funk. But he was in a funk anyway, so not feeling that he was in one was difficult.

Story of his life, really.

Sighing, he closed his eyes and just rested against the tree, doing his best to clear his mind. Wind rustles the leaves, the sun still shining, etcetera. Nice things, nice things.

He started snoring.

It was the sound of whispering that brought him out of his doze.

Cracking an eye he saw three little kid ponies. Foals, Jack was fairly certain he’d heard them called. Or were the girl ones called something else? He couldn’t remember, which was another thing he felt a little bit ashamed about. You’d have thought he’d have picked up the lingo by now.

“Hello,” he said.

The three of them all seemed to be trying to hide behind one another with about as much success as could be expected from this. Once they realised the trouble involved they stopped and, by silent consent, apparently settled on the one with the big red bow to be their spokesperson, much to her obvious reluctance.

“Howdy,” she said. Jack’s eyes narrowed.

“You’re related to Applejack, aren’t you?”

“I’m her sister, Apple Bloom,” said Apple Bloom, as though this should have been widely known.

“Right, right, cool,” Jack said, immediately forgetting her name and pointing two fingers at the remaining foals. “And you’re…?”

“Sweetie Belle,” said Sweetie Belle.

“Scootaloo,” said Scootaloo.

“Right, I see,” said Jack, immediately forgetting these names, too, and rubbing his face again. By the time he’d finished the three kids were still there and he sighed.

“Applejack need something? You need something? You need me to move? I can move,” he said and the one with the bow - Apple Whatever - shook her head, backed up by the other two shaking their heads as well. They didn’t actually say anything though, which did not really help clear things up.

“So you’re just here to kind of quietly stare at me?” Jack asked.

The one with the bow chewed her lip in consternation and looked back to the buddies for support. She must have got it, too, because when she turned back she seemed more resolved. Drawing herself up as much as a teeny-tiny little babby pony can draw themselves up she asked:

“Did you really eat rocks?”

Jack was taken a little off-guard about being asked this just out of nowhere, but that was kids for you. Once he got over this he groaned. He’d only mentioned the rock thing once - offhand, without thinking about it - but apparently word spread fast.

“That’s kind of a strange thing to ask someone, you know?” He asked, by way of riposte, but found himself staring down the large, eager eyes of three powerfully cute ponies. This was not a contest he could hope to win, and he had to look away, defeated.

“Not that many but yes, I did,” he said. Not much use in denying it.

The one with the bow seemed pleased with this answer but got a nudge from her buddies that seemed to suggest she had not yet asked the important question. A little less sure of herself she followed up with:

“...could you eat one now?”

Jack groaned again, longer. Kids. He’d never been able to handle kids.

By the time he’d finished groaning the three of them looked no-less expectant. Just saying no was probably an option, but it wasn’t one Jack had ever been very good at.

“Would it make you happy?” He asked.

All three of them nodded, almost as one.

A third groan, the longest yet, but Jack still looked about him for the nearest rock, finding one a little out of reach and having to lean off the root he’d perched himself upon to pick it up. The thing was maybe the size of his fist, maybe a little smaller. Weighing it in his palm he eyed it and turned it this way and that. The next part was always tricky, in his experience, at least when there were those nearby.

“Could you three, uh, stand behind that tree over there a second?” He asked, pointing to the side with his free hand, where stood a tree of indeterminate purpose.

“Why?” The one with the bow - Apple Berry? No, that wasn’t it - asked, head cocking the most the most unnecessarily adorable fashion.

“Because I need to smash this and I don’t want to blind you with bits of rock,” Jack said, miming bringing his fist down on the rock.

This explanation got them moving and once they were safely in cover Jack squinted, held the rock tightly and then brought his other hand down on it in a sharp chop. This was something he’d got quite good at, and while normally he’d have preferred to have just smashed it against another, bigger rock he had none to hand.

Ideally, he’d have found a smaller one to start with, but such was life.

His first chop didn’t quite manage it so, gritting his teeth in annoyance, he did it again. This time it worked and the rock split in half, further cracks from the stress letting him pull the rest of it apart like some especially disappointing piece of fruit and leaving him with a lapful of comparatively bite-sized chunks.

“Rocks shouldn’t work this way…” he said to himself before glancing back to the barrel, around which were peering the three foals. “Alright, you can come back now,” he said, waving them back over. They did so.

Jack picked up a piece of the rock and held it in front of him. “Rock, see? That’s a rock, right?”

He passed it around them and they each confirmed that, yes, it was rock before passing it back again. Taking it, Jack rolled his eyes, popped the chunk into his mouth and swallowed. The foals gasped appreciatively and Jack dug around the little pile of broken rock in his lap for a bigger piece. Once found, he held it up and eyed the three of them closely.

“But you wanted to see me chewing on them, I’m sure?” He asked.

They shuffled awkwardly, this indeed being something they’d wanted to see but had been too reluctant to ask, at least so bluntly. Being called out on it was uncomfortable.

“Uh…”
“Um…”
“Well, now you mention it…”

Jack sighed..

“Alright, fine. It’s not fun but sure, whatever, anything for the kids.”

And in popped the bigger chunk.

Chewing rocks was not fun. At all. These might have been weirdo fantasy-land rocks that didn’t work like how they did back home but they were still fucking rocks.

The first time Jack had tried biting into one he had been at a particularly low ebb and had fully expected to feel the shattering of teeth. To his total lack of surprise that did not happen, and instead he just learnt that eating Equestrian rocks was a lot like eating Brighton rock, only not really because it sucked and tasted underwhelming.

But really chewing on one for the benefit of the kids wasn’t the worst thing, it just wasn’t particularly nice either. The way they crunched and the way his jaw ground around while chewing were not sensations he relished, and neither was the thought that he could chew on rocks in the first place. That wasn’t meant to happen.

He swallowed again.

“All gone, there. Exciting?” He asked. The three of them just nodded dumbly, not entirely sure what to make of what they’d just seen. He dumped the rocks from his lap to the ground and dusted his trousers off as best he could, asking: “Any other tricks you feel like asking me to do?”

“Not right now,” said the one with the bow after looking to the others, who had both shaken their heads.

“That’s encouraging,” Jack said, settling back against the trunk of the tree and closing his eyes again.

“I heard you ate gems, too,” came a voice he decided was the orange one.

Jack rubbed his face.

“Who’s been telling you this?” He asked, irritated, but no answer was forthcoming. “Ugh, yes. I did. And wood. And mud sometimes. And fish that’s been in the sun too long. And apples that have gone furry. I’ve eaten lots of things you probably shouldn’t.”

He cracked an eye to see how this revelation went down. The three foals looked appropriately nauseated, which made Jack feel a little better. That’s what you get for poking too far.

“Why would you eat all of that stuff?” Asked the little white one, who looked just a touch greener in the face than she had before. The other two just had their tongues stuck out in disgust.

Jack thought about this before answering it, as simply saying the truth - that he’d done it in a deliberately and increasingly fruitless attempt to make himself ill - was probably not the sort of fun answer the kids wanted, nor something he wanted to remind himself of.

“Uh...boredom. It’s a killer,” he said instead, thinking on his feet.

“Huh,” she said, accepting this answer at face value, much to Jack’s relief.

“Did you really headbutt a dragon?” Asked the little orange pegasus one.

This Jack had mentioned more than once, figuring that if anyone headbutted a dragon they’d mention it and be expected to mention it. Unlike eating rocks, it was actually a pretty tight thing to have done. At least in his opinion. On hearing mention of it he sat up straighter.

“Damn straight I did. Got eaten by one, too,” he said.

“You did not!”

“I did! Honest!”

“How are you still around if you got eaten by a dragon?”

“Because he threw me up, obviously. I’m bad for dragons. Bad for everyone, really. They also tried to burn me, obviously.”

“You’re making this up!”

“I’m really not! You saw me before, right? Like, saw me running around the place? Back when I had a big beard and stuff?”

They had. A lot of the locals had. He’d been kind of hard to avoid for a little while, making a nuisance of himself as he had.

“Well it got burnt off, see? That’s why it’s gone. And look here! See this mark? That’s where a dragon horn went right through me.”

The three fillies could see the mark, but they didn’t really know what to make of it. Certainly he sounded convincing in the way that a lot of grown ups sound like they know what they’re talking about, but what he was saying just sounded outrageous.

Still...he was kind of a weird thing from parts unknown...maybe he had a point?

“What about that?” The white one asked, pointing out another mark. Jack peered down at himself. He had a fair amount of interesting personal geography now, thanks to his life choices, and sometimes it was hard to keep track.

“That? I think that was...hmm, you know? I’m not sure?”

He stretched his skin out to have a better look but this told him nothing.

“I got a couple ideas about what might have caused it, if you want to hear those?”

They did, an dso Jack told them.

This became, by turns, something of an extended storytime as one anecdote of unlikely - through true - dangerous nonsense led into another, and Jack gave the kids a fairly length rundown on his various scrapes, lacerations, flips, falls and other escapades.

Initially skeptical, the three soon became enraptured in the way that children having grisly stories explained to them often are. They particularly liked the story about tying the hydra into knots, though Jack swore them to secrecy over that one. He was - in an official capacity - still denying having done that.

The time that passed during this only really became obvious when the light started fading, at which point all of them realised they should probably stop hanging around under a tree so far from everything. Standing, Jack walked with the kids back to the farm whereupon they dashed off to do something playful, no doubt. He watched them go.

He then remembered his ponco-thing. Looking around he located what he thought was the fence he’d rested it on and walked up its length until he found it. The poncho-thing was, thankfully, right where Jack had left it. Picking it up and gave it a quick dust off. He was about to put it on, too, when he turned and bumped right into Applejack, very nearly knocking her over.

“Whoa, you move quiet when you want to, you know that?” He said, steadying her and stepping back. Applejack adjusted her hat.

“Ah have my moments,” she said.

Conversation did not flow naturally from there. Jack felt awkward, and in feeling awkward made it worse by staying silent. This could not stand though, so he bit the bullet.

“Uh, so, how’s Mac?” He asked.

“He’s fine. More worried about you.”

Jack frowned.

“Not sure why he would be.”

“Because he kicked you in the head.”

“That still doesn’t seem like a good reason to me. I got impaled and walked that off. Did you know that?”

“Twilight did mention it, yes.”

Jack wasn’t wholly clear on how Twilight could have slipped that particular tidbit into any kind of conversation, but there you go. He fingered the material of the poncho-thing and looked out across the rapidly-darkening landscape around them.

“Still though, I hope he’s okay. Kind of forced his hand to do something there. Hoof. Whatever. What a dumb fucking thing to do…”

“You kinda need to stop being this hard on yourself. Sure, it was dumb - powerful dumb - but it was a mistake and you said sorry.”

Applejack could kind of tell she wasn’t getting through. She sighed, and carried on:

“Jack, a few days ago you were living alone in a cave and riling dragons up enough that they’re probably happy to see the back of you, at least the way Twilight tells it. I think anyone would have to take some time getting back into the swing of life, you know, not in a cave with dragons.”

“...I suppose…”

“Just take things a step at a time, you’ll get it. Thanks for your help today, too. Really saved us some time.”

“No, no, don’t say that. Well, I’m glad I could help but don’t thank me. I was a bastard before and I need to make it up and - wait, me throwing your thanks back in your face kind of undermines me trying to mend fences, doesn’t it?” He asked, noticing the very reserved, aggressively flat look Applejack had acquired.

“Yup,” she said in tones that conveyed far more than a polysyllabic answer ever could.

“Probably goes back onto being too hard on myself, too? Ah, this is difficult! Alright, hang on: I’m glad I could help you guys out. Anything else you need doing just say the word. You know where I live. I want to be helpful, want to be handy to have around.”

“Might take you up on that. Big Mac said you were a real hard worker.”

“That’s laying it on a little thick. I did my best.”

“Your best was pretty good, from what I saw.”

This sort of unabashed flattery made Jack intensely uncomfortable, but he knew continuing to reject it would be rude, so he just sucked it up while continuing to know - deep down - that his best was anything but pretty good. He fingered the poncho-thing some more.

“Guess I had to start somewhere.”

“Got to start somewhere to get somewhere,” Applejack said and Jack snorted.

“You and your folksy wisdom! Ah, you’ve got me there. Ah, I’ll stop moping. You need my help you know where to find me. I should probably be getting back.”

“Probably a good idea,” Applejack said.

He waved her goodbye, slung the poncho-thing over his shoulder and started walking his way off the property and back towards Ponyville proper, trudging along in the gathering darkness.

His mind continued to churn as he walked, just sort of going over and over the same things he’d been worrying about for most of the day now, turning up nothing new and dragging his mood down further.

“Hey, hold up,” Jack said out loud and out of nowhere, coming to a dead halt on the darkened path. There wasn’t anyone else around. Jack sighed.

“You know all this self-pitying nonsense is getting kind of tiring, right?” He said to himself.

A pause, an intentional one, to better break up the flow of what he was saying.

“Well, yeah, but I did feel bad,” he said only to then sigh in exasperation.

“Of course you felt bad! But just pick yourself up and keep going! Like Applejack said, man, you were out in the wilderness for a while, of course you’re not going to be able to just slip right back into polite society! So just take it one step at a time, alright? And don’t fucking crucify yourself over every little mistake. You’ll just make it worse.”

“Alright, alright. Fuck. From here on out I’ll be a bastion of self-assurance. Better?”

“Much. Also maybe stop talking to yourself, people will start to think you’re crazy.”

“Yeah yeah yeah…”

He then resumed walking, and made no further comment, returning to the Castle of Friendship with no further issue.

It was quiet when he arrived, with no-one apparent. Kind of wanting to find Twilight to check in and make it clear that he hadn’t scarpered he started going through the various places she was likely to be, finding her asleep sprawled across a desk in a small study room off of one of the castle’s numerous libraries.

Jack had often suspected that Twilight had had any available space filled with books just in case she found herself seized by the need for one, making sure that no matter where in the castle she might be there’d always be some within range. But this was just a suspicion on his part.

He’d stopped dead on seeing her there sleeping. Or rather hearing her there sleeping, as her light snoring was what had got his attention in the first place. Leaning against the frame of the door to the study room he just kind of looked over her, smiling a little when he saw her drooling over some of the notes she’d clearly been looking through before nodding off.

The notes, Jack couldn’t help but see, concerned him, at least as far as he could tell from his limited understanding of written Mareain. The picture of him kind of made it more obvious, really, and was what had tipped him off.

Briefly jack considered waking her up, or maybe just carrying her to bed. Both ideas had validity, but he decided against them. If he did wake her up she’d probably just insisting on keeping working - he knew how she got - and carrying her to bed might have been nice but he had the distinct impression that she would wake up in his arms or something equally awkward.

Instead, he settled on something else.

Giving the poncho-thing another quick brush off he crept forward and, gently, laid it over her as best he could. On him the thing had seemed roomy, on her it was vast. Twilight stirred a little and snuffled, mumbling something incoherent, and Jack froze, but she did not wake. Relieved, he moved back to the doorway to observe her again.

Fuck was she cute. Adorable. So Goddamn adorable.

And smart and kind and lovely. Not that you could see those by looking. But Jack just knew.

“Hello, Jack,” someone said and Jack jumped. Whirling around he found, smirking up at him, Starlight. He’d quite forgotten about her.

“Hello Starlight,” he said, turning back again to Twilight.

“She’s very peaceful looking when she’s sleeping, isn’t she?” Starlight asked and Jack gave her the side eye.

“Can’t say I’ve noticed but if you say so,” he said.

Starlight just nodded, looking very pleased with herself, still watching over Twilight. Jack kind of felt that now might be the time to slink away, being as how just standing in the doorway of a room where someone was snoozing for this extended length of time was a bit weird, but he also had an inkling that this conversation with Starlight hadn’t ended yet.

It hadn’t, and a few seconds later she added, certain as anything:

“You should totally cuddle her.”

Jack gave her more side eye but it was as useless the second time as it had been the first time.

“She’s asleep,” he said, pointing to Twilight in case Starlight had missed this detail.

“Exactly!”

What there was about this state of affairs that made ‘Exactly!’ make sense was unclear to Jack. He imagined that he and Starlight were approaching this from entirely opposite directions. Meanwhile, the poncho-thing slipped off of one of Twilight’s shoulders and her sleepy mumblings became somewhat more unhappy.

“No, I’m not cuddling her. She’s fine. It’d be creepy,” he said.

“Oh she wouldn’t mind, I’m sure,” Starlight said lightly, waving a hoof like it wasn’t a big deal.

“And I’m sure she would.”

“Would you mind if you woke up with her cuddling you?”

“You got issues, you know that?” Jack asked, expertly avoiding actually answering the question, something which Starlight noted with absolute delight.

“At least pull the blanket up for her.”

Jack was quiet. He then pulled the poncho-thing up over Twilight properly. Twilight, smiling in her sleep, grumbled and shifted and got more comfortable. It was the cutest fucking thing Jack had seen all day, though he was probably a little biased.

“Go on,” hissed Starlight. “You both want it, I know you do.”

For a blissful second while just watching Twilight, Jack had quite forgotten that Starlight was there. Her leaning in to add this last comment had broken that particular spell.

“Jesus Christ, woman! Get a hobby!”

“Oh, I have one,” she said.

“Urgh. Another one!”

Author's Note

It just never ends, does it?

I guess that's it

Things improved after that, mostly because Jack just got on with it.

The next stage of Twilight’s masterfully crafted plan - which she still didn’t let him look at, still wounded from his making fun of her bullet points - apparently needed to wait to happen, so in the time this gave him Jack just took to being helpful when he could.

He helped around at Sweet Apple Acres again a fair few times, he helped Rarity out when she went to go dig up gems, he helped those three little kids (whose names he still couldn’t quite pin down) expand on their natty treehouse. He even helped Pinkie by holding her above his head and running around town while she held her legs out by her sides and went ‘Whee’.

That last one was likely stretching the definition of help, but he’d been available and had seen no reason to say no, so why not?

There’s even been some kind of local event - some weirdo Equestrian knock-off of Valentine’s day, much to Jack’s amusement - that he’d assisted with, pitching marquees and the like. For the day he’d even gone so far as to mockup a very crude toga alongside a bow he’d fashioned out of a stick and string dipped in glitter and went around insisting to everyone he was Cupid, much to their bewilderment.

Pinkie at least had appreciated it, even if she hadn’t understood it.

All of this went a long way to helping him slip fairly comfortably back into Ponyville. Most of the residents hadn’t been especially ill-disposed to him to start with, given that his ‘monster’ phase had primarily consisted of not wearing clothes, fighting things in the forest and sometimes annoying Twilight and her friends.

Nowadays, his incredibly helpful attitude and benign, idiosyncratic behaviour combined to make him a rather appreciated local oddity. If you wanted something heavy moved or any other kind of help that wasn’t especially delicate and sure-as-shit didn’t involve magic, Jack was your guy.

Jack could not have hoped for better. He even had clothes now!

There was even an actual, bonafide monster attack he helped to thwart by walking up to the thing - some rampaging forest-beast of dubious origin - and grabbing onto it before carrying it back into the woods, a resolution as anticlimactic as it was effective.

“What?” He’d asked, on returning to find everyone gaping at him. “It worked, didn’t it?”

After perhaps a week or three of these kind of relaxed happenings, a gap opened up in Celestia’s schedule and so Twilight’s plan could move forward to its next step: Jack apologising for wandering in and disrupting court while stark naked.

Thinking on this, Jack couldn’t for the life of him work out where the plan was meant to go from there. He’d already made it up in Ponyville fairly conclusively, and he hadn’t bothered anyone else that he knew of. After Celestia what was left?

“There aren’t a whole lot of steps in this plan, are there?” He’d asked Twilight, who’d shuffled her hooves.

“...no,” she’d said.

“It is written down, isn’t it?”

“...yes.”

He probed no further

All of which was why Jack found himself spread across a row of train seats opposite Twilight, tugging irritably at the collar of a suit he’d just about managed to squeeze himself into while they rolled up to Canterlot.

It had been Jack’s idea to be a little more formal about it, to Twilight’s surprise. He’d felt - and explained to her - that given the circumstances he should probably look as though he was trying to make an effort. Royalty and all that. Would be appropriate to look smart.

Rarity hadn’t minded the extra work. If anything she’d relished the opportunity.

By human standards the suit was perhaps a little loud. Liberace would have felt self-conscious. Jack rather liked it, finding its utter lack of subtlety looping all the way past ridiculous and coming back around dangerously close to actually pretty neat. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite as comfortable as it had been.

“Rarity just made me this damn thing and already it feels like it shrunk…” He grumbled.

“Just unbutton the collar, Jack,” Twilight said and he paused.

“...why didn’t I think of that? Ugh, it’s been a while.”

“You look nice, by the way,” Twilight then said. She’d already said this, but felt the need to say it again.

“Thanks. Not as nice as you, though,” Jack said without thinking.

Thankfully, whatever fumbling awkwardness would have resulted from this slipup was interrupted by the train coming to a sudden, tooth-rattling halt. Twilight was almost launched out of her seat but Jack caught her in time, himself barely having shifted. He had the mass.

“I always loved this stop,” he said, looking out the window at nothing much of interest at all. Twilight straightened herself out and looked too, befuddled. There were trees some way distant and some grass and not a whole lot else.

“Maybe something happened,” she said, glancing around to see if any of the other passengers appeared to know anything. None did, all being just as confused as her and Jack.

“Guess we just wait, huh?” Jack asked.

And wait they did. Minutes crawled. No-one even came by to explain the delay. This was really what broke it for Jack. At least back home there’d have been a clipped, difficult to make out announcement half-explaining what the problem was. After a few more agonising minutes with no progress Jack could bear it no longer.

That, and since they’d stopped the train carriage had rapidly become sweltering for him in his gaudy finery, and he needed air.

“That’s it, I’m going to go see what the fuss is. Hold my drink,” he said, getting out of his seat. The carriage was too small for him to stand up in so he had to kind of bend awkwardly and shuffle sideways to head towards the nearest door.

“You don’t have a drink,” Twilight pointed out.

“It’s a metaphorical drink, Twilight, get with the times. Alright, I’ll be back.”

Grateful at being able to stand fully and tugging his collar further still Jack strained to see anything of what might have stopped the train. He saw activity, but at the distance could make out no details. Something was happening, that much was clear. But that was useless.

“See anything?” Twilight asked out the window. Jack squinted.

“There’s some sort of ruckus up ahead. Hmm, I’m going to take a closer look,” he said, making to squat down in preparation for a train-clearing leap.

“Jack!” Twilight said and he paused, already half-squatting, looking back at her. “Just walk up there, don’t jump. You’ll damage the suit.”

“Jump? I wasn’t - you don’t - how did - ?” He fumbled but couldn’t in good faith say that she was wrong. Grumbling, he stood up straight. She had a point, not that he’d admit it.

By way of compromise he power-walked up, which still made devastatingly good time.

The cause of the train stopping was pretty damn obvious. A massive tree had fallen on the line. Its sheer massiveness was the main issue. A smaller one could presumably have been hefted out of the way by some unicorns in unison, but this thing was significant enough that that apparently wasn’t an option.

A fair few ponies were already trying to break the tree up, not apparently having met with much success so far. A pony in a very fine engineer’s hat was being yelled at by another pony in most of a suit when Jack approached, though the yelling tailed off when they noticed him coming up.

The yelling pony, Jack noticed, had what appeared to be a bar of toffee as his weird little butt-mark thing. What that meant was anyone’s guess, but now wasn’t that time. Striding up to both of them Jack put his hands on his hips and asked:

“What’s the problem?”

They looked at him as though he was an idiot and then, apparently struck dumb by Jack’s fabulousness, pointed wordlessly to the tree that had fallen across the tracks. Jack clucked his tongue.

“See, this is what you get when you skimp on keeping the lines clear. And anyway, this isn’t a problem, give me a second.”

Jack moved then to the tree and sized it up. Those ponies attempting to hack it up were somewhat taken aback by this giant, sparkling thing coming looming up at them and stumbled away to see what exactly was going to happen next.

What happened next was Jack deciding that this big tree wasn’t all that, heading over to where the roots had come free of the earth, squatting down and grabbing the tree by the base

“Alley-oop,” he said and with a sharp lift tossed the tree clear of the tracks and a considerable way into the distance. Those ponies gathered - who hadn’t really been paying the human much attention - turned and goggled as the tree turned end over end through the air, landing with a resounding crack and crash behind a hill.

“Hah, how unlikely was that? Worked out though, wouldn’t you say? Those tracks look alright to you?”

The lack of an immediate response from the ponies led Jack to click his fingers and wave his hand at them, which snapped them out whatever daze his displayed had got them into.

“Uh, oh, right, yes. Uh, engineer, do please check the tracks for damage, would you?” The pony in the half-suit said, moving to exert some control over the situation.

“You ain’t my boss,” the pony with the hat growled.

The half-suit pony did not appreciate this one bit and stepped in close to deliver:

“No, but I know your boss and his boss too, so if you wouldn’t mind…?”

Jack had no idea what sort of power-play was going on and left them to it, sauntering back up the train and retaking his seat opposite Twilight.

“What was the problem?” She asked.

“Leaves on the line. Ha! Ahaha!”

Twilight blinked at him.

“Because it was a tree? And it still had leaves on it? You know if I’d made this joke on Radio Four back in the early oughts I’d have been lauded. Lauded I tell you!”

She blinked again.

With a jolt the train started moving again, some ragged cheers rumbling up and down the carriages. Twilight continued to look blank, though by now she was also starting to smile from just how nonplussed Jack looked at his jokes falling flat.

“Tough crowd,” he said, watching the landscape roll past.

Author's Note

Man, I just love events happening in sequence. Don't you?

I've made my bed

The throne room felt a lot bigger than Jack remembered it being, but that may have been because the last time he’d been in it the place had been packed. Now, it was just him, Twilight and Celestia. There weren’t even any guards.

Which was just as well. They had not been overjoyed to see him. Jack couldn’t blame them.

Celestia seemed happy enough though, sitting there on her throne, mane and tail doing that magical billowy thing that Jack honestly found kind of distracting.

That sense of warmth and wellbeing that seemed to accompany being around her was there too, though that wasn’t as much as he remembered it either. He put it down to nerves.

“Hello Jack. My, haven’t you grown?” Celestia said.

Jack had not been entirely sure on what to do with himself during this apology and, on entering, had bowed. Then curtsied. Then tried to take a knee. Then stood up again so he could settle on just standing like a sinking pudding with nowhere to put his hands, Rarity having neglected to give the suit functioning pockets, curse her.

“So everyone keeps telling me. I’m a big boy now - and getting bigger all the time,” he said. Celestia smiled that soothing, regal smile. It was soothing enough that Jack actually didn’t feel particularly dumb for what he’d said. That was a powerful smile and no mistake.

“And I must say you’re looking very smart today,” she said, looking him up and down. He looked down at himself as well and gave a small turn on the spot. The effect was rather like throwing a disco ball into the lightning department at Ikea.

“Oh, this? I just had this lying around.”

Celestia laughed obligingly. She was very good at this ‘Making people feel at ease’ malarky. Back home whenever Jack had encountered that sort of thing it had always made his skin crawl so much he’d felt concerned it’d crawl right off his body. Here, with her, he believed it. She was just so bloody genuine.

To be fair, all the ponies were, Celestia was just the best at it, presumably on account of her experience.

Jack still wasn’t completely used to it.

“It’s lovely. Rarity’s work, I take it?” Celestia asked.

“What gave it away? But yes, she’s a gem. They’re all gems! Look at Twilight, look how great she is.”

He pointed down at Twilight who laughed nervously and tried to look self-effacing.

“You’re meant to be apologising,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, smile fixed across her face. Jack, so relaxed by Celestia’s presence and attitude, had quite let this slip his mind.

“Yes, right, that. Ahem. Celestia, your highness, your maj - I’m very sorry for, uh, kind of crashing in here that one time. Nude. And kind of making a mockery of your security by sort of...dragging them along with me...and then booping you on the nose in front of everyone.”

Jack screwed up his face, trying to remember if he’d missed out any details or if he’d got anything wrong. As far as he knew he’d covered the important parts, and that made him wince. Looking at it now, he could see why that sort of thing was frowned on.

“Uh, yeah, I am actually sorry about that. You’re there trying to do your job and I kind of just mess the whole thing up and cause a scene. I hear that sort of thing is bad for monarchs.”

He looked to Twilight for confirmation on this and she nodded, so he felt reassured. Celestia let out another light laugh from behind a hoof.

“If I’m being honest, Jack I must say you rather spiced my day up,” she said. Jack’s eyebrows raised. He supposed he couldn’t deny that what he’d done might have been comfortably classed as spicy, but the way she said it sounded decidedly appreciative. Which wasn’t what he’d expected.

“I’m spicy now? First time for everything.”

Celestia sat up a bit straighter, the combination of the throne and the dais meaning that she was possibly the first person in a long time that Jack had to look up to while talking to. ALbeit not by a huge amount, but still, those inches were immensely refreshing.

“If you’ve lived as long as I have and done the same things as often as I’ve done it, you come to welcome these little distractions and unusual events, I find. Excluding the dangerous ones, of course, which are less fun. You, though, certainly brightened my day. Especially as I hadn’t seen you in quite some time! I remember your arrival.”

“You poor thing. I’m sorry I had to put you through that,” Jack said with towering gravity, adding to Twilight: “You too, you poorer thing.”

“The point is there is nothing to apologise for. Certainly, there have been worse scenes and - as you might have noticed on your way in - life has carried on. Think nothing of it.”

Jack folded his arms and gave an exaggerated huff.

“It is legitimately difficult apologising to you guys, you know that? I bust up Applejack’s place and straight-up steal from her and she let’s me smash rocks for a day.”

He left out the whole part about getting kicked in the head. It’d derail his whole thing and besides, he’d rather pretend it had never happened. Kind of a dud moment. Jack continued:

“Then I come into your palace and cause rumpus and you just appreciated my antics! I am honestly curious what I’d have to do to be irredeemable.”

Jack thought about that one for a second.

“Actually no, no I’m not. I’d rather never find out. Could you even imagine how alone I’d be, then? Hah! Oh man. Thank you all for being so bloody lovely. I’d hug you both but it might kill you. And if I hugged you, Celestia, the sun might drop out the sky or something.”

“I find that unlikely,” Celestia said, smiling.

“True, but still. I’d rather not risk it, you know?”

“Would you prefer to bump your fist against my hoof?”

This way of describing such a simple, commonplace action was unusual enough to completely throw Jack off his rhythm.

“Uh...sure…?”

Cautiously he approached the dais and the throne from which the regal hoof extended. His fist bumped against a golden horseshoe and, to his immense relief, nothing horrible happened, though Celestia did appear momentarily surprised by something. Jack then withdrew.

“Still though you know, I can’t help feel that I’m just being let off lightly over and over again here. Is this a cultural thing? Are you all softies? I’m telling you Twilight, I could totally handle a pillory. I could!”

“You’re not going in a pillory, Jack.”

“We might have one lying around somewhere…” Celestia said absently, tapping her chin. Jack beamed while Twilight buried her face in her hooves.

“Yes! See! Celestia gets it. That’s why she’s the one in charge.”

Celestia continued tapping for a moment before sighing sadly and shrugging.

“Ah, alas, if memory serves it’s being polished right now and so is sadly out of commission. My apologies,” she said. Jack looked appropriately disappointed.

“Bums. Oh well, you tried, that’s the main thing. See Twilight? Celestia tries.”

“Should I be taking notes?” Twilight asked, flatly.

“Couldn’t hurt is all I’m saying, in my quest for forgiveness.”

“Consider yourself thoroughly forgiven,” Celestia said.

“Aha! You said I had nothing to apologise for! And now I’m forgiven? Get your facts straight, Celestia,” Jack said, pointing accusingly, every moment a sparkling nightmare of gems and rich fabric.

Twilight was tugging on Jack’s trouserleg.

“Little much?” He asked her.

“Maybe.”

Celestia, from all appearances, was thoroughly enjoying this.

“So spicy,” she said.

“You’re a unique lady Celestia, I can see why you keep getting voted in. But, uh, I’ve likely taken up enough of your time and my little friend here seems to be getting restless,” Jack said apologetically, indicating Twilight with both his hands. Celestia nodded with concern.

“She does, doesn’t she? You should probably get her some fresh air.”

Twilight made the most rewarding noise of affronted betrayal. Jack grinned.

And that was that. Much less painful than either Jack or Twilight could possibly have expected. They found themselves strolling back through the palace grounds towards Canterlot proper both feeling pleasantly surprised.

“That went well, don’t you think?” Jack asked her.

“Very.”

“Were you expecting me to do something unfortunate involving a lack of clothes?”

“With you that’s always kind of a risk, though you have shown remarkable restraint lately.”

“We can always go back? There’s still time, she’s probably still there,” Jack said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder and stopping walking. Twilight stopped too and seemed to give the idea genuine consideration.

“Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “Wouldn’t want to overexcite her.”

And on that bombshell she just kept on walking. Jack was so impressed it took him a second or so to start walking again, though it took less time for him to actually catch up. He covered considerable ground with little effort.

“You know I think I’m a bad influence on you,” he said.

“And I’d say I was a pretty good influence on you, so I guess it balances out.”

Rarely had Jack ever wanted to just sweep Twilight up and give her a huge cuddle more than at that moment. He wasn’t entirely sure why, and resisted the urge much as he always did. She’d probably object.

“You - “ he said instead, trying to maybe express this feeling in words and failing. “Yeah, you really are. So what’s the plan now, boss?”

At this Twilight actually appeared a touch guilty.

“Um, I’d actually kind of planned for that whole thing to take longer. Like, a bit longer. I arranged to meet up with some of my Canterlot friends while I was here because I figured that you would be doing something for Celestia to make it up to her, but now, uh…”

“Ah, you got plans running on top of my plan, is that it? Say no more, Twilight! You go see your friends. That happening now?” Jack asked, having absolutely no idea what time it was other than ‘daytime’.

“Soon,” she said.

“Soon is basically now in this day and age. Shoo shoo, off you go. Go have fun, go see your friends.”

“What will you do?” She asked, in a way that Jack could tell was her newer, softer way of saying ‘Please don’t cause trouble’. He appreciated her not saying it outright, but could also understand her concern. He did, after all, have kind of a reputation.

“Nothing horrendous, trust me. I’ll probably just have a walk around, see the sights. I haven’t been here for a while now, and I wasn’t really in a sight-seeing mood when I was. I’ll probably cause a scene just by standing around but I can’t really help that. Sorry.”

Jack was presently the irresistibly eye-catching combination of massive, unique, weird and fabulous. Who could help but gawk?

“No, that’s not your fault. And if you’re sure. Thanks, Jack,” Twilight said, smiling gratefully. He wafted aside her thanks like so much bad air.

“Bah, don’t thank me, I didn’t do anything. Now go, go, off you go, shoo, get out of here Princess of Friendship,” he said, shooing her along. Twilight just cocked her head and gave him an odd look.

“You know I don’t think you’ve ever called me that,” she said.

“Have I not?”

“No,” she frowned. “Sounds weird coming from you.”

Jack did have to admit it had sounded pretty weird in his mouth. If that made sense.

“Twilight it is. Go! You can find me later! You won’t be able not to find me!” He said shooing harder.

“I’m going!”

And go she did.

Author's Note

Is this nearly over?

And I lie in it

Jack did go for a wander around Canterlot and Jack did attract attention immediately, but then again he’d expected nothing less.

Not that it was overly negative attention or anything like that. Ponies stared, sure, but they’d stared in Ponyville back in the day, at least at first, and they’d also stared and run away back when he’d been trying to do his monster thing. Being the centre of attention wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t unusual either.

As long as they didn’t gasp too loudly or cross the street too hastily Jack barely noticed, content as he was to just wander along soaking the place up. Personally, he still found the novelty of it - magical pony city! Half of it kind of floating! Other bits of it actually floating! Magic! - incredibly satisfying.

Ponyville was nice, but it wasn’t that strange, really, once you got down to it.

And it was while he was wandering along and soaking it up that he happened to see coming his way, walking along happy as anything, a brace of ponies and - to Jack’s immense delight - a Changeling.

He’d rather forgotten about them and that whole kerfuffle with finding out what to do with them, but then it all came back to him. Better still, this particular Changeling saw Jack and stopped dead. And not just from the shock of what he looked like, either. She’d plainly recognised him, which could only mean one thing. Jack’s smile reached almost ear-to-ear.

“Eggs! Eggs you lovable, scampish rapscallion you! How are you?” He boomed, making all those ponies within a dozen or so feet flinch and the nearby shop windows flex. Striding over he made an internal note to tone it down in future.

Eggs - flanked by friends who were plainly wondering what else about Eggs they didn’t know - could only stand rooted to the spot while looking him up and down in blank-faced shock.

“Jack? You look really different,” she said.

“It’s the hair, isn’t it?” He said, patting a do that simply wasn’t there.

Having left his time in the mountains being set on fire occasionally behind him it had started to grow back, but was nowhere near the Spider-Jerusalem-before-he-went-back-to-the-City levels of ridiculous it had been when they’d met the first time. Mostly right then he just looked a little fuzzy.

Eggs again goggled at the sheer scope and scale of Jack’s gem-dripping swag and majesty. There was a lot to take in. His hair hadn’t really been the first thing she’d noticed.

“Uh, yeah.”

Here the conversation stalled for a second until Jack forced things forward, giving a wave to Eggs’ friends.

“Hello Eggs’ friends, I’m Jack. Not from round here, broke her out of a jail one time, all in good fun, hello.”

The two ponies - whose names Jack instantly forgot on hearing them, much to his annoyance - were actually vaguely aware of Jack, in the sense of having heard that Princess Twilight associated with something big and unusual.

The jailbreak story was news to them though, and Jack and Eggs actually had a reasonably good time relating the anecdote to the two of them, after which the atmosphere was much more relaxed.

“So how’s it going? How’s life in this fancy-pants city? I must know!” Jack asked.

By then they’d all moved into a nearby ornamental garden (Canterlot was lousy with the bloody things) to sit and be more convivial. Eggs and friends sat on a bench, Jack sat on the floor.

“Things are good. I really like it here. Got a job, too,” Eggs said happily to nods from the two ponies flanking her. Jack wondered if they always moved around like that, and if so if they had any particular reason.

“Ooh, a job. Very fancy,” He said.

Only then did Jack finally notice that Eggs and her friends were all wearing identical - and adorable - little shirts and hats, plainly a uniform of some kind. Jack tried to make out the logo but it just looked like a squiggle to him, and told him nothing.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “You are all...phone sanitisers?”

“We work at a pretzel stand,” said one of the ponies. She was blue. Beyond that she was an enigma. A cheerful enigma, but an enigma all the same.

“For some reason I kind of expected you to end up doing something involving breakfast,” Jack said to Eggs. He could not have explained why he’d expected this, he just had.

“Pretzels can be a breakfast food,” Eggs said firmly. She had strong feelings about this.

“That sounds a lot like pro-pretzel propaganda to me, Eggs, but you’re the one with the experience so I’ll bow to your wisdom. You still living on that floating island thingy?”

“No, I moved off of that. Most of us did. It was only temporary anyway. I have a place. Could show you, if you want?” She asked, adjusting her wings briefly and settling herself more comfortably on the bench.

“Far too kind! I wouldn’t want to impose,” Jack said, holding up a hand.

“It’s no problem, I-” Eggs said, but all further details were curtailed by a forceful cough from someone nearby. Eggs and co turned, as did Jack, to find a pony in half a business suit standing there and not looking especially happy.

“Would you mind leaving, please?” Said the pony once he’d noticed that he had their attention.

This was unexpected, at least to Jack. From the sudden slump of Egg’s shoulder and the supportive bunching up of her friends it seemed like like a surprise to them and more something they were familiar with but not fond of. Not that Jack noticed them doing that. He was looking at the suit-pony in confusion.

“Uh, there a reason you’re asking?” He asked.

The suit-pony only then properly noticed Jack - which suggetsed a certain level of focussed obliviousness that would take a lifetime to perfect - and double-took, but carried on with remarkable coolness all the same.

“Yes, that is my bench and I’d rather not have to clean it after a Changeling has been seen using it.”

There was a lot wrong with this statement. Beyond the obvious, unexpected prejudicial outburst, surely it was too late now anyway, Eggs having already sat down. Had this guy not thought this through?

Also what did he just say?

“Pardon could you run that by me again? Am I missing something here?” Jack asked, squinting at the pony and then to Eggs and friends to see if they had any answers. Eggs was presently looking very put-upon and her friends had both put hooves around her shoulders, but this didn’t give Jack any fresh information to work with.

“Apparently,” said the suit-pony so Jack’s attention returned to him.

“Your name on that bench or something?” Jack asked.

“It is, actually. I sponsored it. This whole garden, in fact. So if your friend wouldn’t mind vacating first the bench and then the garden entire I’d very much appreciate it.”

Honestly Jack hadn’t expected that answer. Not that it changed much.

Then something clicked in Jack’s head.

“Hang on a minute, I know you. You’re that guy from the train. The one who was yelling at the engineer. Hi again.”

“Yes. Hello. Could you please-”

“Yes yes yes. See, now my urge right now is to pick you up and pop you in that tree over there, but that’s the sort of thing that’d get me in trouble right now because I promised Twilight - “

Then, for possibly the first time in his life Jack had what felt almost scarily like a good idea. It struck him like a bolt from the blue and unfurled in his mind like some sort of brilliant flower. It was an idea so good he was amazed it had in his own head, of all places.

He remembered back to the train, back to this self-same guy throwing around his weight because he knew important people. And now here Jack was, about to just let the fact he was buddies with a princess slip past like that wasn’t a big deal to most other people. He coughed and then gave the rest of that sentence a second shot:

“Princess Twilight, rather. I promised Princess Twilight - after having just seen Princess Celestia - that I wouldn’t cause trouble around town. And I’m not going to break that promise. That said though I can’t rightly let you just-”

The pony felt that he plainly had let Jack have his moment for far too long, and interjected:

“Now you just hang on on a minute!”

Jack reached out and put a finger to the pony’s muzzle. It was the shock of this that shut the guy more than anything else, though Jack’s enormous size also helped.

“Shush your mouth sounds there, uh, what was your name again?” Jack asked, realising he had no idea.

“Toffee Nose,” said Toffee Nose, with every appearance of pride. Jack was genuinely taken aback. He doubted he’d ever get the hang of pony names.

How determinative was a pony name anyway? Would a pony named Mr Bun The Baker be destined for baking, or would they be able to embrace their dream of being an OBGYN? Would a pony dubbed Massive Fuckup be cursed to fuck up massively? Why had Eggs stuck with the - admittedly rather cute, if odd - name Eggs Benedict? Where’d she got it from?

Was there anyone called Seabiscuit and had Jack just not met them yet?

Mysteries like this ran like rivers through the universe.

Jack realised he was getting distracted.

“For real? You poor bastard, you never stood a chance, did you? Anyway, as I was trying to say, I know people too, hmm? People perhaps a little higher up than the people you know? And people who - oh, might object to your shoddy treatment of fellow Equestrian citizens? Especially since - and correct me if I’m wrong here - wasn’t it Celestia’s rather nice idea to let Changelings be citizens if they wanted to? Wasn’t that her idea?”

Toffee Nose suddenly didn’t look quite so casual and comfortable with the situation as he had a few moments before. In fact, he looked decidedly uncomfortable. He shifted on his hooves and glared at Jack and glanced at Eggs, still hiding behind his legs.

“...yes,” he muttered.

“Yes! Yes it was. Thank you, I wasn’t sure. So, you know, I mean, she was pretty nice to me a minute ago when we were talking but do you think she’d be as pleasant if she knew you were here just being a tosspot for no good reason?”

Toffee Nose said nothing.

“Want to find out?”

Toffee Nose continued to say nothing and Jack rolled onto his hands and knees and crab-walked over to cup a hand to his ear as dramatically as possible.

“Sorry didn’t catch that.”

“...no I do not want to find out. Your friend may continue using my bench.”

“That’s what I thought you said but I wasn’t sure. How very kind of you. And perhaps you’d like to apologise to my adorable friend here and then move along and enjoy the rest of your day?”

It looked as though there were a good few other things that Toffee Nose would rather do but the daunting proximity of Jack - and his regal connections - were sufficient enough to overcome his reluctance.

“Sorry,” he said in the tightest-lipped manner possible and without looking anywhere near to Eggs before immediately turning and leaving. Jack watched him go with a dead stare before rolling back into the same sitting position he’d been in before the whole mess started.

Once very sure that the guy was well out of earshot Jack turned back to Eggs and friends with a look of absolute astonishment on his face.

“Oh my God I can’t believe that worked! Most of that was total bullshit. I was just making it up as I went along. Was it convincing? Did you buy it?” He asked, leaning in conspiratorially.

The two ponies nodded enthusiastically with expressions of delight written across their faces. Eggs just looked to be a little stunned.

Despite having now won permission to sit on Toffee Nose’s bench - and it really did have his name actually, physically on it as they discovered - the whole kerfuffle had rather soured the mood, and the group dispersed. Eggs waved goodbye to her friends who trotted and then led Jack back to hers just to have a chat and show him how she was doing with life now. She’d insisted.

She lived in an apartment towards the outer edges of Canterlot, the slightly less grand portion. Still nice though. Sure as hell nicer than his hometown, as Jack was keen to point out to her. They had to step over fewer drunks and no-one tried to sell them drugs. Eggs did not know what he was talking about.

Getting up to Egg’s place was an experience. The interior of the building was less roomy than Jack was used to, what with Ponyville’s alarmingly high ceilings and open spaces. He managed, it just took some squeezing here and there, and once actually in Egg’s rather nice little apartment he did have to stoop. He was used to this, though.

It was better once he’d sat down. Egg’s sofa groaned and he took up all of it, looking around while she busied herself making drinks for the two of them. That ponies drank coffee at all remained something of an endless source of wonder to Jack, and he imagined it always would.

He’d have preferred tea, but Eggs did not have any. Jack had been appalled but had let her off and told her so.

Before too long she came back, balancing two mugs on her back. Again, Jack was struck by how everyone here seemed to be living in a world that had not been designed with them in mind. Nodding thanks he took his teeny-tiny pony mug and gave its contents a blow.

“Thanks for standing up for me,” Eggs said, sitting in the single seat opposite the sofa. Jack shrugged it off.

“Man, Eggs, it’s not a big deal, honestly, I just ran with it. That guy is the first pony I’ve met who’s been less than pleasant, which was surprising.”

“Still, it means a lot to me. Thanks.”

“You get that a lot?” Jack asked.

“Less, now,” she said.

The implication being that it did still happen. Jack could read the room.

Eggs hopped back down off her chair again, the tension of the moment apparently too much for her.

“I’ll get some snacks. Pretzels okay?”

“Do you get a staff rate or something?”

“Basically.”

“The perks! And yeah sure, very kind of you.”

She went off. Jack hung around on the sofa some more, looking around the place. It looked cosy and homely enough. Coffee table, bookshelves, stuff.

The bookshelves caught his eye. Not for the books - he wouldn’t have been able to make much of them - but rather for the pictures that also occupied the shelves. Setting his mug down he carefully dismounted and moved over to have a closer look.

Eggs had a surprising number of pictures, it turned out. Busy lady with a rich and full social life.

The biggest was a framed picture that showed a group of Changelings in front of someplace Jack did not recognise. He did - to his surprise - manage to recognise Eggs in the picture, though all the others were strangers to him. Whoever and wherever they were, they all looked plenty happy.

Presumably a bunch of Eggs and her Changeling friends prior to them all going their separate ways and making their own way of things now they were citizens? Or something like that. Jack was making guesses, but it seemed convincing to him.

He looked over the other pictures. Jack spotted the two ponies that Eggs had been with earlier in a few of them, along with some others. It looked like Eggs had been quite the busy bee in enjoying life, as well she should be. Jack swallowed. Something was building up from somewhere within his gut, and he wasn’t the sort of noxious emission he was used to.

For one thing he didn’t really get those anymore.

There came the sound of a pretzel-laden plate being set down.

“You okay?” Eggs asked and Jack shuffled back to his seat.

“I’m dandy. Was just looking at your pictures,” he said, waving a hand towards the bookshelf. Eggs looked bashful and munched on a pretzel. It still amazed her that she wasn’t sick of the things yet.

“Oh, those. I, well, we never really had pictures before, or friends, or, well, much of what I do now and I guess I’m still kind of just...in love with it all a little.”

“No need to explain it to me, Eggs. I’m actually very happy for you. You’ve carved out a lovely little life here and that’s fantastic,” he said.

Then he thought a second or two, reaching out to pick up his drink again, thinking some more, then:

“Eggs, you and I are kind of loose acquaintances, aren’t we?” He asked, turning the mug in his hands. It looked hilariously small, now, but Jack was not laughing. The coffee was still steaming but he downed it anyway and felt a distant warmth but little else.

“That’s kind of a weird way of putting it but yes,” she said.

“Could I vent to you for a second?”

This caught Eggs a little off-guard, but she rolled with it all the same. She wasn’t made of stone, after all, and she knew how things were. Sometimes you just needed to vent. Who didn’t? She could listen with the best of them.

“If you want? Wouldn’t you prefer to do that with Princess Twilight?” She asked. Jack gave a pained grin.

“Uh, heh, no, no. I like Twilight, but there’s just something about talking to someone you only kind of know, you know?”

She did know. It was one of those things. Often easier to unload onto a stranger. Someone could have explained the logic behind it, but neither of those someones were Eggs or Jack. But they just got it.

“I get it, yeah.”

“Thanks. And do stop me if I start sounding a little maudlin.”

“You say what you need to.”

“Very much obliged,” Jack said.

He then took a moment to gather his thoughts.

“Did I ever tell you what my deal was?” He said, once the moment had elapsed.

Eggs shook her head. “Not really. Just said you weren’t from around here.”

“Didn’t think I did. And no, I’m not from around here. I’m from a different world entirely, if you can believe that. It’s full of people like me - species-wise, I mean - animals that don’t talk and no magic whatsoever.”

“That doesn’t sound very believable,” Eggs said, reasonably enough. Jack couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. Just a little one.

“I know, right? But trust me, I lived it. And anyway, I was there, one face among billions, just trudging along. I was just some guy. I worried about the future, didn’t really like my job, dealt with things day to day. Normal. Would have just, you know, lived my life without a ripple and died and that would have been that.”

He swept his hand in a very emphatic ‘done and dusted’ kind of a gesture and looked to see if Eggs was in the mood to interrupt him. She did not though, and so Jack continued:

“Instead, I wind up here. Don’t ask me how, I can’t really remember. Just did, and that was that. And I can’t go back. That’s important. According to Twilight it is physically impossible for me to go back. So I’m stuck. Just like that I go from some guy to the only example of my kind on a world entirely unlike my own. So that’s all of my cares and worries and fears just plucked out of my hands - pop! - gone. Just like that.

And it’s not like I’ve got a whole lot to worry about now! Nothing serious. Look at me! I’ve turned into some - and am still turning into - some kind of invulnerable collousses...thing…”

He frowned.

“Collusses? Cololosses? Colossus? Fuck, one of those...”

“I think I get it,” said Eggs, bringing Jack back on-topic.

“Yeah, yeah, so anyway, I haven’t eaten anything in days and don’t apparently need to anymore. I can eat, but I just don’t get hungry now. That’s weird. I tried to cut my hand with a knife just to see if I could and I broke the fucking knife. Also pretty weird.”

No-one had been around to see him try that, and it had been mostly done out of idle curiosity rather than any real desire to actual be cut, but there you go. The results had been just as described. He owed Twilight a knife.

Well, he owed Twilight rather a lot, he felt, but also a knife on top of that, now.

“Oh, and magic - the big-deal thing that didn’t exist back home but does here and is important - does bugger all to me. So basically I’m golden. I am above mortal concerns, it seems. So that’s all my worries gone and nothing coming in to fill the void. Except the terror that I’m turning into some kind of weirdo monster.”

Jack stared at his hands a moment and tried to remember what they’d looked like when they’d been the size they were meant to be. It was getting a little difficult.

Bereft of anything helpful to say and not really sure what else she could do right then, Eggs offered Jack a pretzel. He took it nodded thanks, taking a bite. He hadn’t been hungry, obviously, but eating did help make him feel a little more grounded.

“And it’s not as though I chose to leave everything I had to worry about behind, I didn’t run away from them. I was taken away from them. I didn’t want to leave mum behind like that. I didn’t want to leave Sophie behind like that. I didn’t want to leave dad to, well, let’s not split hairs here he’s probably dead by now - and that’s kind of the point, I wasn’t there for that. I was here, probably doing something stupid because what else do I have to do?”

Eggs shrugged.

“And honestly, Eggs, I’m a lot more scared about what’s happening to me than I’ll admit, even to myself. I sure as shit ain’t telling Twilight how worried I am. I mean look at me, I look different from the last time you saw me, right?”

Again Eggs looked over the enormous, alien thing currently hogging her entire sofa and taking up a significant slice of her living space.

“Little bit.”

“Again, kind, thank you. I’m changing. When I first arrived in Equestria I was, oh, let’s say a little over five foot seven. Tall for round here, but pretty average back home, all things considered. Know how tall I am now?”

“How tall?” Eggs asked, because that was what was expected of her.

“A hair over eight foot. Roughly. Maybe. The measurements here aren’t what I’m used to but approximately that’s what it looks like to me. That ain’t normal. And I’ve bulked out all to hell. I look like a fucking brick wall. That ain’t normal. And it’s not stopping. What if it never does?

She had no answer to this. Who could? Jack hadn’t really expected her to. That’s what venting was for - asking rhetorical questions that make everyone who hears them a little uncomfortable so that the questions stop eating away at your insides.

“But you know what really gets me though? What still gets me?” Jack asked.

Eggs shook her head.

“Those times when I’m glad I got stuck here. Because it wasn’t my fault and it took me away from everything I was worrying about. Since I’m stuck here I didn’t need to worry about watching dad die by degrees while I try to help mum look after him. That all happened away from me, far away, out of my hands and out of sight and none of that was my fault.

Don’t need to worry about trying to find a place to live with Sophie so we can move out of living under her parents even though the numbers wouldn’t work and both of us knew we couldn’t really do it. Because I get to live in a fucking castle here for free. And I don’t need to worry about my shitty job that reminded me every day I should have been looking for something better even though I never did because money is useless to me now, basically. What do I need to buy? I can live in a cave and eat rocks. I have lived in a cave and eaten rocks!”

“You have?” This was news to Eggs.

“It was a phase I was going through.”

Eggs considered this and asked the hard question:

“Rocks good to eat?”

“Honestly? No, not really. Anyway, uh, where was I? Oh yeah. And if I’d run from any of that - if I’d just slipped away on purpose, got here somehow by choice - I would have been a coward, would have left everyone else holding the bag. I couldn’t have done that. Might have thought about it, considered it, but I never would have. I couldn’t have.

But it doesn’t matter. Because I didn’t. It was done to me, I had no choice. I get all the benefits and none of the responsibility because it wasn’t my fault. And if Twilight had found a way back and I hadn’t taken it? I would have been a coward then, too, and the choice would have been back on me.

But she didn’t and she can’t, so it’s out of my hands completely. I am without blemish. A leaf on the wind. Everyone else got the shaft but it had nothing to do with me so my conscience is clean. And sometimes I think about that and I don’t feel all that bad and - and I think that makes me a bad person.”

Things got very quiet after that. He’d obviously finished saying all he’d wanted to say, and Eggs was now trying to come up with what the hell she was meant to say in response. While she did that, Jack reached out for another Pretzel. They were rather moreish.

“I don’t think you’re a bad person, Jack.”

“Kind of you to say, but you don’t really know me.”

“I think I know enough. Princess Twilight likes you and I think that says a lot. You stood up for me. That, and you don’t really do anything bad. Not really bad, at least. I was part of an invading army,” she said, by way of contrast.

That was enough to snap Jack at least partway out of his sudden low ebb.

“You were?!” He asked, alarmed. Eggs gave him an odd look.

“Did no-one explain that to you?”

“Uh...maybe…”

If they had, he had forgotten.

Jack thought about this revelation, grunted, then rapped a knuckle against the side of his head.

“But you’re so adorable though...ugh, you’re right. Said I’d stop doing this. What am I doing? Being invited here and then talking your ear off! Think I’m just in a bit of a funk for whatever reason. It happens. I’ll get better. Things have been going alright. Things are good. Things are good, Eggs! Sure my life took a turn but it wasn’t a bad one, was it?”

“No?”

“No! No it was not. This place is a bonafide wonderland and I should just appreciate it, get on with it. No use getting hung up on stuff I can’t do anything about, right?”

He stood up as suddenly as possible in such a confined space, a move that lacked drama on account of him having to stoop not to tear through the ceiling.

“Sorry for unloading on you like that. Christ, what a whining bastard! All this time in civilisation is giving me far too much time to think! Let’s go do something fun, eh? Do ponies have bar billiards? Let’s go play bar billiards.”

Author's Note

Blah blah piss and moan

I'm still hanging on

Ponies did not have bar billiards, at least none that Jack could find in Canterlot. They did, however, have darts.

Eggs was very, very good at darts. Jack was not. She was so good that Jack was more impressed than outraged that he was being consistently beaten by someone who didn’t even have hands. He made up for own lack of skill with his enthusiasm. They played until Jack’s enthusiasm led to light structural damage, at which point they left, Jack apologising the whole way out.

“Hope that wasn’t load-bearing, whatever that was…” He fretted, glancing back.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Eggs assured him, giving him a pat.

“There you are!”

Jack froze, as did Eggs.

Coming straight for them was Twilight, and never had purple looked quite so annoyed.

“I’ve been looking all over for you!” She said, glowering at Jack.

“You were? Whoops, I must have lost track of time. You have fun with your friends?”

“Don’t try and change the - oh, hello Eggs, didn’t see you there.”

Eggs had done what apparently came quite naturally to her in Jack’s presence and half-hidden behind his legs, peeking out just to see if things were settling down.

“Hello,” she said.

“Yeah sorry, things took an unexpectedly friendly turn and I was just catching up with Eggs. Did you know she sells pretzels now? And lives indoors? And has bookshelves?”

“My life is rich and exciting,” Eggs said, emerging further from around Jack.

“She jokes, but her life actually seems quite nice, and for this I am happy.”

Twilight glanced between the two of them, scanning for signs of shenanigans. She saw none, or at least none that jumped out at her. Jack could tell he was being scrutinised.

“You thought I was getting up to mischief, didn’t you?” He asked her, hands on hips.

“No!” She said, affronted, but then she folded: “Well, maybe.”

“That’s alright, I would be worried too. But no, just a chat, coffee, pretzels. All very pleasant. I take it it’s time we were heading back?” Jack asked.

“You can stay longer, if you want? I don’t want to interrupt you guys,” said Twilight. Jacks looked down to Eggs.

“Nah it’s fine. I’ve already probably thrown poor Egg’s evening into upheaval and wasted enough of her time,” he said.

“I actually had fun,” Eggs interjected.

“See how kindly she humours me!” Jack said with overstated pride.

“No, really.”

“You’re so good at darts, Eggs!”

This was kind of a non sequitur but it had been on Jack’s mind and so it just slipped out. That neither Twilight or Eggs felt the need to point out how this did not relate to anything went some way in demonstrating what a solid grasp on him both of them had developed.

“I’d never played it before today,” said Eggs.

“You’re fucking with me,” he said. Eggs shook her head. “Well now I feel worse, but I’m also impressed. I have mixed feelings.”

“You can go if you need to. You can always come back, right? For a day or something?” Eggs said. Jack raised his eyebrows.

“If you’d be down for that, if I wouldn’t be bothering you,” he said.

“Sure. Just tell me first, yeah? Everytime we meet it seems to be by accident. Or in a cell.”

“Well that’s your birthday surprise idea ruined, now I have to come up with something else. But for real though, uh, yeah. That could be fun. Alright. I’ll see how that works out.”

“I look forward to it. For real,” said Eggs, grinning. Jack gave her his best fingerguns in appreciation for her having purloined his words and this brought the conversation to a natural conclusion. Twilight and Jack waved eggs off and off they went.

They took a later train than Twilight had initially planned and so the return journey was - perhaps appropriately - undertaken at twilight. It was very picturesque.

On the way back Twilight kept dozing off, keeling over in her seat and snapping awake when she overbalanced. Jack watched this happen once or twice before he could take it no longer and waved to get her attention and then patted his lap.

“Come on,” he said.

Jack fully expected her to politely decline but instead she wordlessly hopped off her seat and hopped right back up onto his lap, smiling sleepily before settling down against him and promptly falling asleep. Jack had not seen that one coming and spent the rest of the journey doing his best not to move a muscle, lest he disturb her.

Once they got back he carried her to the castle. Unlike the other day when he’d worried about her waking up in his arms, this time he just didn’t care. She didn’t wake up anyway, and got tucked up snug in her bed with no issues whatsoever.

Unless you count having to go past a silently smirking Starlight an issue. Jack just held up a hand so he didn’t have to look at her on the way to his own room.

Life settled down after that, it must be said. Jack continued to make himself useful, not out of any particular sense of obligation but rather just because he liked having something to do - indeed, he had to bat aside offers of payment or other remuneration.

On balance, Jack to admit he rather preferred wearing clothes and pottering around doing odd jobs in a nice pastoral setting with pleasant company to running around like a mountain man and punching the wildlife.

Not that that hadn’t been fun. It had been a lot of fun. But you couldn’t do that sort of thing forever. It got a little samey after a while. And sleeping in a bed was fantastic, even if it was three or four beds shoved together.

That, and now that he was apparently indestructible the risk had kind of washed out of the whole thing. Getting shredded by Timberwolves had been an exhilarating experience, but the other day he’d been helping raise a barn and it had fallen on him and it hadn’t even knocked him down.

The quiet life was a lot more enjoyable, really.

And it was on returning from one of these quiet days that Jack came sauntering in on Twilight again in another sub-library study room, bent over a desk and working feverishly. He approached.

From the looks of things she’d clearly been at it a while. Work covered the desk and some of the floor near her, too. There were more sketches of him, he saw, covering what he had looked like upon arrival and up until what he looked like now. Some bits were crossed off and others had hastily scribbled notes pointing here and there, the meaning of which was unclear.

Though, even without being able to read any of it, Jack could tell that Twilight must have not been especially happy when writing any of it down. The writing had a hurried, harried aspect to it that suggested someone in a state of some agitation.

He swallowed, then cleared his throat. Twilight jumped.

“Looks like you’re having fun,” he said.

“Heh, haha! Yeah, lots of fun. Just - you know - some stuff, just doing some stuff,” Twilight said, hurriedly trying to gather up all her notes and shoving them out of sight. Jack gave her the time and space to do this, hands behind his back and rocking on his heels. Twilight ended up sitting on a bulging satchel, precariously balancing but playing it off like it was nothing.

“Done?”

“Hehe, what are you talking about Jack, what notes?” She asked, grinning nervously and then having to reach down to poke in a clutch of sketches that had started escaping the satchel.

“Flawlessly executed. Uh, can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“There was actually a plan, right? From the other day? It kind of just happened and that’s great and all, but I kind of expected there to be more fiddly bits.”

Given that the whole thing had basically just boiled down to him bumbling around, kind of apologising to maybe two people, punching some rocks, eating one rock, wearing an awesome suit and then losing at darts. Great fun, yeah, but not something Jack could see Twilight having drawn up to work quite like that.

“There was a plan. But then you just sort of started doing your own thing and it seemed to be working better so I, uh, well, I figured it’d be better you just kept doing that,” Twilight said, shrugging. Shrugging nearly unbalanced her and her wings snapped out just in time for Jack to already have caught her on instinct.

Jack felt a little bad about trampling over he plan. Sure it had all been for his benefit anyway and it had all worked out, but he’d still managed to scupper the hard work Twilight had put into the thing.

“Ah I see. Still, it’s the thought that counts. I appreciate the effort you put in.”

He considered adding ‘I appreciate you’ - in an implied general sense, nothing weird or anything - but the words couldn’t quite get out so he just swallowed them back down again.

“It’s no effort,” Twilight said, quietly, wings tucking back in and leaving it as Jack’s hand being the main thing keeping her from toppling over.

“I appreciate it anyway. And you. And uh, hey, there was one other thing.”

Jack knelt down to better get onto Twilight’s level. This did not work as well as it once did, and she still had to tilt her head up. Only a little though, because of that satchel she was perched on, but it was still there.

“There was one person I haven’t around to apologising to yet, you know. She kind of slipped through the cracks somehow. Don’t know how,” he said.

“Who? I don’t - oh, right, me. You’re talking about me, aren’t you?”

“No pulling the wool over your eyes, Twilight.”

She smiled, blushed maybe a tiny bit, and had to look away.

“You don’t have to apologise to me, Jack.”

“Apparently I didn’t need to apologise to anyone! But I did and it was the right thing to do, and it’s especially the right thing with you. Really, if I’d been serious I should have started with you. Because, uh, well, you’re the most important, to me.”

This hung for a second until Jack cleared his throat.

“Which is to say, uh, you’re the most important to me because you’re kind of, well, my constant. You’re always there for me, for whatever reason. Always got time for me, always thinking well of me. I don’t know why, doubt I ever will, but you are and you do and - well - I don’t think I’ve ever really laid out how much that means to me. You were pretty much the first thing I ran into when I got here, and you’ve just been…there...ever since. This constant. Kept me going. Keeps me going.”

Twilight was going pinker by the word, and Jack faltered when he realised he didn’t actually know what point he was trying to make. Or at least, didn’t know how to actually communicate the point he was feeling.

“I’m not sure where I’m heading with this, Twilight. Just, sorry if I ever disappoint or frustrate you. I wouldn’t do it on purpose. It’s lovely here and everyone’s lovely here but if you weren’t here I, uh, well I’m not sure I’d cope. So thank you for not giving up on me and I hope I never do anything that might make you.”

Jack still had no real idea what point he was actually trying to make, and what’s more Twilight looked like she was tearing up, so he was brought to a halt and distinctly worried that this was somehow his fault.

“You got something your eye or something Twi-”

And she lunged, wrapping around his neck - for it was the only part of him she could really wrap around anymore, or at least the only part of him she could that was in reach - and letting out some sort of strange, strangled half-sobbing noise.

“Oh Jack!” She wailed, but gave no further details as to why she might have said this. Jack, surprised, very, very gently patted her on the back.

“There there,” he said.

Still Twilight gave no elaboration, but Jack didn’t really mind. She was soft and warm and very important, and so Jack just enjoyed the hug.

“There there,” he repeated, and Twilight just sniffled.

“Uh…” came a voice from behind - that happened a lot in Jack’s experience, he noticed; it was enough to make a man paranoid - and Jack and Twilight broke instantly, whirling to see Spike stood behind them, his chef’s hat crooked, a spoon held in one tiny claw.

“Dinner is pretty much done if you guys aren’t….busy…?” He ventured.

“Oh, oh! Thank you Spike, we’ll be right there,” Twilight said brightly, wiping her eyes on the back of her hoof.

“Right, right…” Spike said, sparing the pair a last, odd look before departing the scene.

“You alright there, Twilight?” Jack asked and for a moment or two she just kept staring at the space Spike had just been occupying before snapping to the moment and switching her eyes to Jack.

“Hmm? I’m fine, I’m fine. Just...thinking. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of you. It, I mean. I’ll take care of it. Anyway! You heard Spike! Dinnertime! You are hungry, right?”

“Sure,” Jack lied, letting her hop down off the chair and following her out of the room.

Things would probably work out.

Author's Note

What pretentious waffle.

Well that's done.