Timber Spruce scowled, furiously sipping his green smoothie through a straw as he sat at the fountain next to the Canterlot Mall Food Court. He could see quite a few of the tables from there including one where a purple-skinned, bespectacled girl was sitting with a yellow-orange-skinned, spikey-haired boy. They were sharing a meal together, talking and laughing all the while. Ugh! Just the sight of it was enough to make his blood boil.
Timber stopped drinking his smoothie and got up in a huff. As he was storming away, he wasn’t watching where he was going and collided right into another person, splattering his smoothie all over her.
“Oh my gosh!” Timber cried. “I’m so sorry. I—Oh, it’s you.”
His mood soured even further when he saw who he had collided with.
“Is that any way to talk to a lady?” Sunny Flare retorted, narrowing her eyes at him.
“Under normal circumstances, no, but in this case, definitely.”
Sunny rolled her eyes and shook as much of Timber’s smoothie off herself as she could. Timber considered just walking away and leaving her cold, sticky, and smelling like mixed greens, but not even she deserved that. He grabbed some napkins from a nearby table’s napkin dispenser and begrudgingly handed them to her.
“Thank you,” she replied coldly as she wiped the rest of the smoothie out of her top.
“Whatever,” he scoffed.
“Still blaming me for your breakup with Twilight, aren’t you?”
“Gee, what gave you that idea?” he deadpanned.
“If I remember correctly, Twilight was planning on breaking things off even without my interference. Besides, even if we were to exclude that bit of information, you really only have yourself to blame for all this.”
“Hey, if you hadn’t walked over and made a scene, Twilight wouldn’t have even known about me flirting with your friend,” Timber snapped. “Besides, I was only doing it for the extra attention. Unlike Twilight, your friend, whoever she is, didn’t mean a thing to me beyond that.”
“You think what I did was just about you being a little playful with Lemon Zest?” Sunny retorted back. “Or do I really have to spell it out for you?”
“Well, since you clearly know Twilight and Lime Zest SO much better than I do, please go ahead,” Timber sarcastically answered.
Sunny rolled her eyes and said emphatically, “You made LEMON Zest think that you were available and that you were interested.”
Timber shrugged his shoulders. “So? You could have just walked away and told her I was neither of those things, and then everything would have been fine.”
Sunny clenched her teeth, resisting the urge to just slap Timber upside the head.
“Oh, sure, I totally should have just done that. I mean, who cares about how hurt and betrayed she would have felt from finding out that she was nothing but game to a really attractive guy?” Sunny tried not to shout.
Timber was about to argue back, but then Sunny’s words began to sink in. “I was treating her feelings like a game?”
“Yes!”
Realization came crashing down on Timber like a watermelon hitting the sidewalk after being thrown off a skyscraper.
“Oh my gosh,” he whispered to himself, covering his face with his hands.
“Is that all you have to say for yourself?” Sunny retorted.
“Hey, believe it or not, now that I know what I actually did, I want to make things right,” Timber replied defensively. Then, he frowned in thought. “But how?”
“You could start by giving Lemon Zest a proper apology,” Sunny deadpanned.
“Okay,” Timber agreed before thinking again. “Say, if I apologize to Lemon Zest, do you think you two can help me get Twilight back?”
That did it. Sunny raised her hand and gave Timber the hardest slap that she has ever given a human being.
“Yow!” Timber cried, clutching the back of his head. “You psycho! What the hay was that for?!”
“You’re unbelievable, you know that?! Is getting Twilight back the only thing you care about?!” Sunny raged. “If I were to flat out tell you no, would you still want to make things right with Lemon?”
“Gosh, of course, I would,” Timber snapped back. “I just wanted to see if I could get something out of it for myself too. Is that so wrong?”
“Well, no,” Sunny conceded, “but you could have at least waited until after you made amends with Lemon first. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with looking out for yourself, but if you keep putting yourself first, how are people supposed to trust you to come through for them when they need you the most?”
“You think I LIKE putting myself first?” Timber argued. “Because I don’t.”
“So, why do you do it?”
Timber crossed his arms and turned away from her. No way was he going to spill his guts to this crazy girl. Nuh-uh. Not after what she did to him. Especially not after she slapped him like a misbehaving dog.
“Necessity,” Timber replied curtly.
“You don’t know what it’s like to have other people treat you like you’re important, don’t you?” Sunny inferred. “If you don’t look out for yourself, who will? Isn’t that right?”
“It’s not that big a deal,” Timber denied, puffing himself out. “Besides, it’s not like I don’t have anyone who cares about me. I mean, I have my sister, and for most of my life, I had my parents.”
“Knowing that other people care about you and feeling cared about aren’t the same things,” Sunny pointed out.
Timber finally turned back to face her, deflated, and replied, “It’s not that my sister and my parents were horrible people because they’re not. It’s just that compared to the camp and the family legacy, I never really felt as if I was a priority to them. I mean, I don’t mind helping run the camp or working when I could be meeting people and making friends or being homeschooled. It’s just…” He trailed off. “I don’t know.”
“It’s just that if you were given the choice, you’d want to do other things,” Sunny finished for him, “but you never felt as if you really had a choice.”
“Exactly,” he admitted. “Also, I’ve seen what it looks like when you go too far with the whole ‘putting other people first’ mentality. My sister puts so much of herself into running the camp and making sure the campers have a good time that not even I can tell which of her smiles are real anymore. I’ve tried to tell her that she needs to take it easy on herself, but up until recently, she’s never really listened to me.”
“What happened that finally got her to listen to you?” Sunny asked with genuine curiosity.
“I’m not sure if you would believe me if I told you.”
“Oh, please,” Sunny scoffed. “With all the weird things that go on in this town, how can I not?”
“Well, okay, if you’re sure,” Timber hesitantly replied. “She found some magic, tried to use it to give the campers a good time before the camp got bought out, used too much of it, and turned into a crazy plant monster.”
Sunny blinked twice completely unfazed. “I see.”
“I mean, I know crazy magic shenanigans happen all the time here, but I doubt you’ve seen anything that crazy.”
“Oh, I have actually,” Sunny rebutted.
“What?!” Timber cried, his jaw falling to the floor.
“It happened to Twilight during the Friendship Games.”
“WHAT?!”
Sunny raised an eyebrow at him. “She never told you?”
Timber mutely shook his head. He sputtered as he tried to wrap his mind around the idea of his ex-girlfriend undergoing a similar transformation that his sister had experienced.
“B-bu-but why wouldn’t she tell me about it?” he finally uttered.
“I don’t know,” Sunny replied with a shrug. “You’re going to have to ask her yourself if you want to know for sure, but if I had to guess, she might have been worried that you’d think badly of her if you knew.”
Timber looked away from her and stared intently at the floor as thoughts crashed and jumbled in his head.
“Would you have thought badly of her?” Sunny asked, crossing her arms.
Timber made eye contact with her again and answered, “Well, I don’t think badly of my sister, so it’d be pretty hypocritical of me if I thought badly of her, now wouldn’t it?”
Sunny narrowed her eyes at him. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
Timber grumbled a bit before grudgingly admitting, “Okay, fine, I probably wouldn’t have thought badly of her, but knowing about it definitely would have bothered me. It’s not that I’d think of her as a terrible person or anything like that. It’s just that…” He bit his lip before looking to the left and to the right. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Can you trust me?”
Timber sighed and gestured for Sunny to lean over closer to him.
He bent close to her ear and whispered, “I’m terrified of magic, especially the evil kind.”
“I’m sorry. What?” Sunny deadpanned, staring at him incredulously.
“I know it’s super weird, considering that Twilight and her friends use magic all the time and that it’s kinda everywhere now, but I really am seriously afraid of it. Oh, good golly, I can’t believe I just told you that.”
“How long have you been afraid of magic, and how did it even come about?”
“Hey! The last time I attempted to go toe to toe with evil magic, my sister nearly killed me, herself, and a whole bunch of other people. Can you really blame me for being afraid of it?”
“And I watched the wimpiest girl in my school nearly rip the world apart because of magic, but I’m not afraid of it, unlike you,” Sunny huffed.
“You must be so proud of yourself,” Timber sarcastically retorted.
For a while, the two of them just stared each other down in silence. Then, Sunny’s expression softened from incredulity to genuine curiosity.
“So, what about Twilight having become a monster once before bothers you?” Sunny asked.
Timber’s expression softened as well as he answered, “I, I’m not sure. To be honest, even though I don’t think badly about my sister for what happened to her, a part of me is scared that it might happen again except that I’ll actually lose her for good this time. If I had known that Twilight had gone through the same thing, I’d probably be afraid of that happening to her too, even more so considering that, unlike my sister, she and her friends are around magic practically 24/7.”
“Why do I get the feeling that you never told Twilight anything that you just told me?” Sunny remarked.
“Well, either you’re a really good guesser or I’m just that obvious,” Timber replied dryly.
Despite herself, Sunny snickered at that. She quickly stifled her snicker and hoped that Timber hadn’t noticed. Timber totally had. He wanted to keep cracking jokes and get her to laugh again, but something in him told him to hold back, so he pretended not to notice.
“Um, you know, I think you really ought to get a head start apologizing to Lemon Zest,” said Sunny. “I happen to know where she is. I could take you to her if you’d like.”
Timber smirked and held his arm out for Sunny to take. “Then, by all means, lead the way.”
Instead of taking it, Sunny rolled her eyes again and pushed him forward from the back.
“Alright, Alexstallion Hammerpen,” she quipped in return. “Let’s just get a move on. Lemon’s not going to apologize to herself.”
Sunny led Timber to the music store where he could see Lemon Zest at a digital kiosk, listening to some music samples and banging her head to the music.
“Uh,” Timber said to Sunny before suddenly realizing, “I’m so sorry. I don’t think I caught your name.”
“You never asked for it,” Sunny remarked with an amused smirk, “and it’s Sunny, Sunny Flare.”
“Okay, Sunny. Look, Sunny, are you sure about this? I mean, I know I said that I wanted to make things right, but what if telling her the truth ends up upsetting her? And what if upsetting her ends up hurting me, physically and emotionally but mostly physically?”
“Well, she’s not particularly violent, so you don’t have to worry about any physical injury.”
“Uh,” Timber continued to hem and haw as he watched Lemon. “Are you sure you can’t apologize for me?”
“Move it, Wood Boy,” Sunny demanded, shoving Timber two steps forward. Timber turned and stared at her incredulously.
“Wood Boy?”
Sunny simply shrugged and folded her arms. Timber rolled his eyes and turned back towards Lemon. He gulped down his nerves and took another two steps toward Lemon, then another and another and another. Finally, he was two steps away from Lemon’s back. He loudly cleared his throat trying to get her attention, but she didn’t seem to hear him. Timber tried again a second time, but Lemon just continued to bang her head to the music that was bleeding out of the headphones.
Timber sighed, turned around, and was about to leave when he saw Sunny gesturing for him to tap Lemon on the shoulder. Timber groaned, turned back towards Lemon, and did just that. Unfortunately for him, Lemon responded.
“Oh my gosh! RCLG! (translation: Ridiculously Cute LifeGuard!)” she cried in excitement, removing the headphones and placing them back on the kiosk. “Long time no see, good-lookin’. What’s shakin’?”
“Uh,” Timber paused and bit his lip. Oh gosh, what was he even supposed to say? Talking to girls was so much harder when he wasn’t flirting or putting up a front.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. Then, he mentally kicked himself for giving her zero context for the apology.
“For what?” Lemon asked as she frowned in confusion.
“I, uh, I,” he stammered. Oh, just spit it out already! “I made you think that I was available and interested when I really wasn’t. And I feel terrible about that. Soooooo, I’m sorry.”
Lemon blinked at him. “Wait. So, were you not available or not interested?”
“Eh, both,” Timber squeaked out, wincing.
Lemon’s expression dropped like stone.
“So, all those times that you called me ‘gorgeous’ or told me that I was colorful or bright or astoundingly radiant or said that I could outshine the sun if I wanted to, none of it was true?” Lemon asked, her eyes shining with sadness and disappointment.
“I mean, I meant it, just not in a ‘I want to date you’ way,” Timber nervously replied.
“And you were also already with someone?”
“Yes,” Timber shamefully admitted.
Lemon turned away from him and began to stare at the CDs without really looking at them. She wasn’t upset enough to cry, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but want to hit or throw something. She really thought something special could have come out of starting a relationship with this guy, but no, she was just some hot girl he met at the beach, and she felt like an idiot for thinking she was anything beyond that.
“Uh, you okay?” Timber asked while mentally praying that she wasn’t contemplating how to discreetly murder him and hide his lifeless body.
“Oh, yeah,” Lemon answered, still not looking at him. “I’m fine, I guess.”
“Oh, okay. So, are we cool?”
“Yeah, sure.” Lemon stiffly picked up the headphones from the kiosk and put them on. The kiosk flooded her ears with loud, cacophonous rock music, but she didn’t smile or bang her head to it like she did before. Timber decided that now would be as good a time as any to just walk away, so he did.
He stopped when he got to where Sunny was waiting for him.
“That was awful,” he simply stated. “I’ve never felt like such a dirtbag in all my life.”
“Well,” Sunny replied, “you WERE acting like one.”
Timber gave Sunny a withering look.
“Can we please skip to the part where you try to make me feel better?” he retorted.
“Look, Lemon just needs a little time and space to get over it. In a few days, what happened here will be just a bad memory, and my other friends and I will be there to make sure that’s exactly what happens.”
“You know, since Twilight broke up with me, I technically am available now,” Timber offered, turning back towards Lemon Zest. “Maybe I should—”
“Take her out on a pity date?” Sunny finished for him. “There are two big reasons why that’s a terrible idea. I’ll start with the one that’s most relevant to you and your giant ego. Going out with Lemon would make it harder for you to win Twilight back.”
Timber frowned at her, deeply offended. “Okay, one, my ego isn’t THAT big, and two, I can totally work around that. I mean, I can just take Lemon out on one date, and that’d be the end of it. She’d feel better about herself, and then, I can go back to focusing on Twilight, and everything works out, right?”
Sunny leaned into Timber’s personal space, which made him feel incredibly uncomfortable, stared at him intently, and whispered ominously, “Wrong.”
Then, she quickly pulled away, creeping him out further.
“Aww, but why not?” Timber whined.
“Well, would YOU want to be taken out on a pity date with someone who clearly has her eye on someone else?” Sunny retorted. “I know I sure wouldn’t. Besides, the only thing a pity date will accomplish is messing with her emotions even more, which by the way is reason number two.”
“Okay,” Timber reluctantly agreed. “I get it. No pity dates.”
He sat down on a nearby bench, rested his elbows on his knees, and rested his head on his hands. Sunny sat down next to him. For a while, neither of them said anything. Five minutes of silence passed by before either of them made a sound.
Timber sighed. “No wonder Twilight got mad at me about what I did with Lemon. It wasn’t about whether I cheated or not. It was about me being careless with other people’s feelings. She probably decided that she couldn’t trust me with hers since I had gone ahead and messed with Lemon’s without a second thought.”
“You should probably keep that in mind when you try to win her back, and by ‘probably,’ I mean ‘most definitely.’” Sunny pointed out.
When Timber didn’t so much as grunt at her, she frowned contemplatively and asked, “ARE you still planning on trying to win her back?”
Timber bit his lip. He shook his head and briefly closed his eyes as confusion fogged his mind. “I don’t know. On one hand, I really, really, really, REALLY want her back because having her as my girlfriend made me feel like I was important for once. On the other hand, she’s with someone else now, and she seems ridiculously happy with him. Do I really want to ruin that just so I can feel good about myself?”
“Do you?” Sunny raised an eyebrow at him.
Timber shook his head again, this time with certainty. “No, no I don’t. Besides, knowing that I had messed up Twilight’s happiness would have caught up to me eventually and more than cancelled out my good feeling, making me an even bigger dirtbag than I was with Lemon.”
“So, you actually do have a heart underneath that smolder,” Sunny remarked with a small smile. “It’s just a little deep, and by ‘a little,’ I mean ‘a lot.’”
Timber gave her yet another withering look but then smiled back.
“You know, I never realized how nice it is,” Timber said to her.
“How nice what is?”
“Talking to a girl like an actual person as opposed to someone to impress or get attention from.”
Sunny frowned at that. “Come on. Surely, you must have talked to either Twilight or your sister like this at least once.”
Timber looked away and frowned in thought.
“That’s funny. I don’t remember ever talking to Twilight like this,” he replied. “All I can remember from our relationship is how bad I wanted to impress her and how great it felt whenever I did.”
He groaned in frustration and added, “I just gave myself more reasons to not go after her, didn’t I?”
“You’re learning,” Sunny pointed out with a smug tinge in her voice. “And your sister?”
“Well, we might have talked like this when we were kids but not recently,” Timber answered. “We lost both our parents five years ago, and since then, all our conversations have been about either running the camp or not getting separated by the social worker. The conversations about the social worker stopped after I turned 18.”
He sighed again. “I never told her this, but I really miss us just being normal siblings.”
“Define ‘being normal siblings,’” Sunny requested.
Timber opened his mouth to answer but stopped. He never really thought about it, but how does one define normal siblinghood? All he remembered about it was that he used to get away with being goofy and childish, but that could have been just him getting older. He also remembered not having to worry about finances or Gloriosa working herself to insanity or worse, but that could have been just having parents around to worry about that stuff for the two of them.
“I, I honestly don’t know how,” Timber finally answered. “I guess you have to experience it for yourself to really know.”
“Well, that’s not going to help me,” Sunny deadpanned.
Timber gave her a questioning look. “What? Are your parents waiting on a new baby or something?”
“Not yet, but they are doing the paperwork for one.” She scowled as she unleashed her pent-up fury. “What in the world were they thinking?! Waiting this long to get another kid?! What? Were they just waiting until I was old enough to babysit so that they won’t have to spend money on a sitter?”
Timber winced. “Oooh. You seem angry about that, like really, REALLY angry.”
“Of course, I am,” Sunny snapped. “I mean, I don’t exactly mind the idea of being an older sister. It’s just that this is a HUGE change for me. I’ve been an only child for ALMOST TWO DECADES, and now, my parents just expect me to adjust to having a younger sibling who is going to be practically a whole generation younger than I am. I mean, how on earth am I supposed to be calm about this?!”
“Have you tried chamomile tea and lavender?” Timber deadpanned. Now, it was Sunny’s turn to give Timber a withering look. Hers looked scarier for some reason.
Timber stammered a bit before saying, “Look, maybe the situation isn’t as bad as you think it is. I mean, I doubt that your parents are doing this just to make your life miserable. Maybe they’re both going through a midlife crisis or something.” He paused. “Okay, now that I’ve said it out loud, I will admit that it’s a terrible reason for adopting a child, but eh.”
Sunny narrowed her eyes at him. “Eh?”
“I mean, it could be worse. Your parents could have spent your college money on a dairy farm full of sick cows.”
Sunny burst out laughing at that. She tried in vain to hold it in but eventually gave up and allowed herself to laugh. Sunny’s laughter caught Timber completely by surprise. In all the times he had actually attempted to get a girl to laugh, he has never gotten anybody to laugh like that before.
“Umm, I wasn’t trying to make you laugh or anything like that,” Timber said to Sunny as her laughter died down. “I mean, sure, I was trying to make you feel better but not by that much.”
“Well, I didn’t know how much I needed that until you got it out of me, so thank you,” Sunny replied with a genuine smile on her face.
Timber couldn’t help but smile back. “You’re welcome.”
Author's Note
Okay, for those who read "The Wall Between Us," there was a scene in the second to last chapter that I wanted to further elaborate on in a different fic, and well, this is that elaboration.
Okay, when Ro994 announced that she and AngyLopez shipped Timber Spruce with Sunny Flare, I was honestly pretty confused but went along with it. Now that I've written a fic featuring the two of them, IT TOTALLY WORKS. 
I had WAY more fun than I expected to writing this fic. There's just something strangely entertaining about the snark-to-snark attraction they've got going here. 
I wasn't planning on referencing Milo Murphy's Law with this fic. I had actually planned to title this "Timber Falls" just for pun, but then, I realized that having this fic reference "Chop Away at My Heart" (the song) would be strangely fitting (and hilarious). 
By the way, in case you haven't figured it out yet, Alexstallion Hammerpen is supposed to be ponified/EG-ified Alexander Hamilton. Why people in EG still have horse-y names I will never know. 
By the way, if you're wondering why Sunny Flare went over a month without telling Lemon Zest the truth about Timber, she wanted to track him down and make him apologize first and was actually about to give up and tell Lemon herself when she saw Timber by the fountain. The reason why neither Sunny nor Lemon ran into Timber for over a month is because with his relationship with Twilight severed, he has fewer excuses to keep visiting the city, and Gloriosa's been making him help out at camp more. The day this fic took place just happened to be one of his days off. I was planning on adding all this to the fic, but it messed with the flow of the narrative too much.
