Apple Bloom hadn't picked up her guitar in years.

She'd been learning for a while, ever since Applejack gifted her old guitar one Hearth's Warming. Apple Bloom could still remember how excited she'd been when she got it, how eager she’d been to learn.

Still, she had an hour to kill. It was as good a time as any to try again.

Apple Bloom was outside, on the familiar orchard paths she'd always known. With a guitar hung over her back and her hooves kicking up the damp earth beneath, she made her way onwards to pay Granny Smith a visit.

A breeze wafted through the trees and tickled at Apple Bloom's mane. Memories resurfaced of a walk just like this one. Hauling a cartful of cider on this very path, to meet with her friends.

Her friends.

Their letters sat on her cabinet back in her room, unopened. She couldn't bear to look at them and remember what she was missing. Her friends were in Canterlot, making their dreams come true, and here she was back home, wasting away, bucking apples, living the same life day in and day out.

Yellow and orange and brown all around her. An earthy sweetness in the air, the faintest hint of winter's incoming chill in the wind. Petals from hundreds of apple blossoms littered the ground wherever she stepped.

Apple Bloom had always loved the autumn. Now, it terrified her.

Was this always going to be her life?

Every day blended together into a single laborious moment. Bucking apples, pulling carts. Smiles at the table for mealtimes. Staring at the ceiling for hours at night, trying to pretend the faint lights of Ponyville from her window were really coming from Canterlot. Biting back sobs, trying to forget her own yearning. Failing, every single time.

She'd arrived.

Granny Smith had never been one for a lot of fuss and bother. That last night, she'd insisted that nopony go through any on her behalf. True to their promise, they'd buried her in a quiet corner of the orchard, a simple stone to mark her resting place, amidst a little grove of apple trees.

Apple Bloom sat before the grave and began to strum a tune.

It had been around the time of Granny Smith's passing that she'd stopped playing, she realized. No real reason, really. It just fell by the wayside, the way things sometimes did without ponies meaning to.

She became vaguely aware of somepony watching, from just behind the trees. She kept playing, only turning her head to face the visitor once she'd finished her song.

Sugar Belle stood there, a sad smile on her muzzle. Apple Bloom met her sister-in-law with a sad smile of her own.

She said nothing as she stepped forwards, to take a seat beside Apple Bloom and look silently at the stone over Granny Smith's grave. She rested a hoof on her belly, swollen with foal, watching in silence for many moments.

"Come to find me?" Apple Bloom asked.

"I heard the music," Sugar Belle answered. "I thought I'd come and pay my respects too."

"Mm."

No words for a long time. The wind in the trees was ample sound for the both of them.

"You doing OK?" Sugar Belle finally asked.

Apple Bloom shrugged. "Yeah, I'm OK. Why wouldn't I be OK?"

Sugar Belle heaved a deep breath. "Applejack's worried, you know."

Apple Bloom exhaled in a snort she didn't mean to make. "What's she so worried about?"

"About you." Sugar Belle shifted a little where she sat. "Ever since your friends left for Canterlot, well..."

"Well, what?" The words came out forcefully, with an anger that Apple Bloom had tried, for so long, to pretend wasn't there. Her heart sank as she saw how it made Sugar Belle flinch.

"She just doesn't want to see you so torn up," Sugar Belle said quietly. "And I don't either. If you're hurting, I want to help."

Apple Bloom pursed her lips, tail sweeping on the ground. Whatever she felt, it just wasn't fair to take it out on Sugar Belle.

"I'll be fine," she said, trying to offer a smile. It felt more like a misshapen simper. "Really. Don't worry about me. Ya got somepony a whole lot more important to worry about." Apple Bloom gestured to Sugar Belle's belly.

Sugar Belle smiled at that, tenderly rubbing at her belly. "You should have seen Little Mac's face when we told him he was going to get a sister. Gosh, I wish I'd gotten a photo."

"You're a great momma." Apple Bloom's smile felt a little more genuine now. "I love how your family's growin'."

Family.

Sugar Belle leaned over, wrapping her hoof around Apple Bloom and giving her a fond squeeze. "You're my family too." She released the hug, getting back to her hooves. "And if you need anything, I'm here for you, alright?"

Apple Bloom could only nod, watching in silence as Sugar Belle departed towards the farmhouse.

Family.

Just like Applejack and Big Macintosh, right? Apples to the core, together. All of them.

Family.

The ones she'd do anything for. The same ponies she'd drop everything for. The ones she had dropped everything for.

That was why she was still here, wasn't it? Because of family?

All those dreams of building homes and libraries and skyscrapers. All those prospects. Traded all of it, and her friends with it, for endless days in an apple orchard. All of it for family.

Family!

The same brother whose ambitions stopped at apples! The same sister who'd talked her away from following her friends to Canterlot! The same family that treated her like a foal! Held her back from where she was supposed to be!

And the same sister-in-law about to bring yet another pony into this sorry excuse of a life! She took it back. Sugar Belle deserved it as much as the rest of them.

For a burning moment, Apple Bloom hated them all.

She then suddenly grew aware of a sharp pinch on the frog of her hoof. Apple Bloom looked down to see how she'd unconsciously been pressing her hoof into the ground out of suppressed rage, right atop a sharp pebble on the ground.

Just like that, her anger dissipated and left a lingering guilt in its wake.

No. She didn't hate them. How dare she think that way?

And yet however she tried to ignore it, scream in her own head again and again how much she loved them, there was no denying what was there. A lingering, doubting resentment.

No. Not here. Not in front of Granny Smith.

Apple Bloom took a deep breath. For a moment she simply took in the autumnal peace of the orchard around her, before she took up the guitar and began to strum again. Something, anything to fill the void her anger had left behind.

Somepony, please. Save her from all this.

Author's Note

Take my hoof and pull me out this mudhole
Kiss away the nightmares, won't you please?
It's like a burning fever that won't end
Get me out and save me from this place...