After Sunset

It’s late when I get back into the farmhouse, and I’m shivering like a wet cat. I pull my clothes more tightly around myself as I approach the door, mindful of Applejack’s reaction and knowing that if she couldn’t look at me then it probably wouldn’t go over well with anyone else.

Hell, it’d probably just kill Granny Smith outright, and the last thing I need is another death on my conscience.

In a way, I’m almost thankful. Applejack reacting like that… it numbed me up again. The spot in my chest where everything was starting to hurt is just cold now.

I pull the door open, pausing at the small creak the old hinges make, then slip inside. It’s dark, but my eyes adjust quickly.

Quicker than they probably should.

The stairs loom in front of me, creeping up to the second floor where I know the rest of the family is sleeping, and I wonder if Applejack is asleep, too.

Part of me wants to talk to her. To try and explain myself, and try and erase the look on her face that’s currently etched onto the back of my eyelids so I see it every time I close my eyes. It was a look of judgment and horror. An expression that I hoped I’d never have to see on any of my friends’ faces.

I’m not tired. Not yet. So instead of making my way up to the guest room I turn and head into the den to flop down on the couch.

My arms are itching. My chest is tight. I know what I want to do but I promised Fluttershy I would try. I can’t do that to her. Not like this.

If I tried, I bet I could step into the Fog again and be back in the East End in under an hour, even this far from Canterlot. I could step outside, take a walk, and be right back in front of my little shit-hole train station office with my stash and Sunset’s ‘Hand’ and I could just erase the whole fucking world for a few hours.

And then maybe a few more, and a few more after that.

I’d have to apologise to Chase, but he’d accept it. He’d bluster and snarl and make it out to be a huge deal, and maybe he’d stiff me a few times on runs to make up the loss, but then I’d be back to my routine and everything would be fine.

Applejack could just forget she ever saw me.

She could forget she ever saw the scars.

But Fluttershy wouldn’t forget. That’s the problem. She would follow me, she would try to find me, and she probably would eventually. Even though it would be easier on everyone if I just… just stopped existing, I know Fluttershy wouldn’t let me.

It’s the only thing keeping me here right now. The only thing keeping me in one piece is the fact that I made a promise.

And I’ve broken enough of those for two lifetimes.

“Stupid promises,” I grumble.

The front door creaks faintly behind me with the surreptitious softness of someone trying not to make any noise, and I glance up and over my shoulder, past the couch arm, and towards the entryway.

There’s someone there, a slender figure in a hoodie with a backpack slung over one shoulder, and a weight to her footsteps that I half-recognised.

Before I can say a word or even register who it must be, they pause, turn their head, and meet my gaze from across the room, and my heart all but stills in my chest.

Eyes the colour of rose apples, with dark bags beneath them, stare out at me with a gut-wrenching lack of expression. A dark bruise circles the left eye, distorting her light olive complexion, but it’s mostly hidden by the ragged, hanging veil of red hair.

“You…” The word hisses past my lips

She’s taller than the last time I saw her, but then, it has been a year, and kids her age sprout fast. I know I did. When I was her age I grew almost eight inches in the course of a year.

Apple Bloom didn’t quite clear that height, but she had at least a good half-foot more now, though.

“Hey, Rainbow,” Apple Bloom says quietly as she drops her backpack onto the floor by the door with a dull thud. “Forgot y’all were comin’ t’stay.”

She steps into the living room and drops into the chair across from the couch.

“If ya wanna take yer temper out on me do ya mind if we save it t’morning so we don’t wake Granny?” Apple Bloom says as she pulls her hood back. “Also y’all might need t’get in line, Diamond Dogs ain’t had their turn this week.”

And I thought Applejack looked bad.

What little I glimpsed under Apple Bloom’s hoodie didn’t tell anything close to the full story. Her face is a scatter of old, mostly healed bruises, and from the way she’s sitting, I’m guessing she’s nursing a few more nasty ones around her ribs.

There are two tiny butterfly bandages on her lip too. From the look of it I’d guess she got punched square in the mouth, which means that, if anything, the bullying hasn’t just kept going since I left…

It’s gotten a lot worse.

I don’t know what it says about me that I don’t feel bad about it. If anything, it’s a little gratifying to see that my life isn’t the only one that went to shit after the nightmare of the Trials.

Apple Bloom shuffles around in her hoodie pocket for a moment before pulling out a half-eaten candy bar and starts snacking on it, ignoring me for the most part except for the occasional glance at my bandages, where they’re peaking past my sweater.

“Who roughed you up?” Apple Bloom asks after a stretch of silence.

I glance down at my arms and chuckle bitterly.

“Me,” I say without explanation.

Her expression doesn’t even flicker. Her gaze just zeroes in on the bandages again and she lets out a small grunt of assent as she shuffles a bit in her seat until she’s sitting cross-legged in the recliner.

“Ain’t exactly subtle,” she says after a moment before taking another bite.

I narrow my eyes at her. “Yeah well, I didn’t exactly have anyone to hide it from since I was living on the streets before this, so excuse me, princess.”

I snarl the words out as my temper flares, but she still doesn’t flinch. She just stares back at me with an ugly, beaten look on her face before shrugging again.

“Guess that’s fair,” Apple Bloom says after a moment, pausing to stare down at the last bite of her candy bar before popping it into her mouth.

Her eyes fix on me as she chews on the bit of candy, and my first thought is… that I’m not really all that mad.

I should be furious. I should hate her.

She’s the reason that Sunset is gone. It wasn’t just that Apple Bloom was part of it, either. By all accounts, it was her idea in the first place, meaning she was the one who may as well have pushed Sunset off the roof of Canterlot High with her own two hands.

Except… there’s a very particular word that comes to mind just looking at her right now.

Apple Bloom’s face is sunken, leaving her fine-boned features standing out hard against her skin. Her eyes are dull and glassy with a kind of resigned, stolid emptiness, and there’s something that’s just fundamentally broken about her.

Yeah, that’s the word.

Broken.

Apple Bloom is broken, and even I don’t know how to work myself up over someone who’s already that far gone.

“How bad is it?” I ask after a long, quiet moment. “At school, I mean?”

She doesn’t answer for a while except with a shrug, but I wait it out, and eventually, she lets out a quiet sigh and shakes her head.

“Depends on the day,” she says finally. “Sweetie’s got it the worst next t’me Ah guess since pretty much everyone knows that whole mess was mah idea.”

“What about…?” I trail off. I hadn’t meant to ask about Scootaloo but now that the subject is raised I can’t help myself.

“She takes’er licks same as either’a us,” Apple Bloom says. “Sweetie just takes it personal-like is all, Scoots is tough, so she just kinda weathers it. Sometimes the two’a us’ll try ta egg’em on so they’ll tire themselves out beatin’ the snot outta us, instead’a Sweetie… but it don’t always work.”

I can picture it in my head. I can see the three girls getting cornered over and over. Chased down in different parts of the school by pissed off students who want payback, or maybe by this point, it isn’t even about payback.

Schoolkids create traditions surprisingly quickly.

Sometimes, all it takes is having a target put on your back once for the outline of it to stick to your skin forever. Everyone can see it. Everyone can hear the whispers in the hall about who’s on the out and out, and who’s safe to take out your frustrations on.

It’s easier if you think they deserve it, after all. I should know, it’s not so different from being homeless. There are always assholes who’ll troll up and down the streets looking for some poor bastard sleeping on a park bench to mess with.

If I was a better person, I’d feel bad, but I don’t.

I think Sunset would probably feel bad. Hell, she might even forgive them by now, but it’s hard to say. I know she didn’t forgive them back in the Trials. Maybe if she had forgiven them then it would be easier for me to do it too, but that’s just coward’s thinking.

It doesn’t matter because, in the end, they made a choice, and that choice ended with Sunset worse than dead.

I stand up, running a hand over my bandages as I do, and scowl.

“You deserve it,” I say bitterly as I move past her, and out of the den.

“Ah know,” Apple Bloom replies dully.

Stopping at the stairs, my hand tightens to a hard grip on the banister at her reply. Why couldn’t she make it easier to hate her? Why couldn’t she just act like a brat? Or make excuses?

Why does she have to sound as broken as I am?

“We all do,” Apple Bloom says after a moment.

I don’t reply. I don’t know if she’s talking about her and her friends, or if she’s talking about all of us who were involved. The ones who created the profile that started and ended everything, and the ones who stood by and watched an innocent girl lose everything.

It doesn’t really matter in the end, I guess since both are pretty equally true.

The funny thing is: it doesn’t even occur to me what was wrong with that conversation until I get back to the guest room. My brain is sluggish and cold, and I’m distracted by the things that I want and I know I can’t have, so I’ll blame it on that, but I probably should have noticed.

Apple Bloom.

She never needed to turn on the lights.

Morning comes faster and more harshly than I’d like, and despite waking up in a decent bed for the first time in better than six months, I’m still stiff, sore, and bone-tired.

The window is open, cracked just enough to let in the faint morning breeze. It carries the smell of apples and tree bark, which is a step up from the bouquet of garbage and day-old vomit that perpetually hangs around the East End.

Everything under my bandages itches like crazy. I need to change them, and that’s gonna take a while. Hopefully, Applejack didn’t have any grand plans for me at…

“Ugh… five’o’clock in the morning?” I grumble. “No one oughta be awake this early unless they haven’t been to sleep yet…”

I stand up, rubbing a hand reflexively over the bandages and counting the ridges beneath them. I don’t manage more than a couple of steps away from the bed when a quiet, timid knock comes at the door.

Crossing the rest of the room, I crack the door open, half-expecting to see Granny or even possibly Apple Bloom.

What I don’t expect to see is a red-eyed, sallow-faced Applejack who looks like she hasn’t slept in about ten solid years.

“Uhm… m-morning, Dashie.” Applejack’s voice is raw like she’s been crying. “You uh… mind if Ah come in?”

I shrug. “It’s your house.”

Opening the door the rest of the way, I step aside, and Applejack steps inside gingerly. Her shoulders are sagging and I’m struck again by the notion that there is no way she slept more than an hour last night, and that was if she slept at all which I doubted.

“So uh… about… about last night,” Applejack says shakily as she sits down on my still-messy bed.

“Yeah?” I ask after a long moment, and she flinches as I tighten my grip on my left arm.

“I uh-” her voice cuts off in a weak tremble.

“I get it,” I say quietly. “Forget about it, we got work to do today, right?”

Applejack stares at me for a long moment, with a sallow, haunted look in her face. I don’t look away. Why should I?

She’s scared. Scared of me? Maybe. Maybe scared of the scars on my arms. Scared of what they might mean. There’s nothing to talk about, though. They’re there, and I can’t make them go away. I heal fast, I heal pretty well, too. Nobody heals that fast, though.

Nobody heals that well.

“Ah came back,” Applejack says after a moment, her voice raw. “Ah tried to, Ah mean… after Ah ran off like a damn coward Ah tried to come back.”

I raise an eyebrow. I didn’t remember her coming back. I lost some time on that hill though.

“But,” she continues, “Ah just… Ah froze when Ah saw ya again. Sitting there, shakin’ on the hillside… Ah thought: ‘Jackie just go’n apologise. T-Tell’er it’s fine. Tell’er… damn it tell’er anythin’!’ But Ah couldn’t-”

She’s babbling. Applejack doesn’t babble. She isn't supposed to panic and shake like a leaf.

“Just forget it!” I snap.

She flinches. Applejack isn't supposed to do that either.

“Forget it,” I say again.

Then I grab my bandages from my bag and nod sharply at the door. I don’t wait for her to leave before I start loosening the roll. I don’t wait for her before I start to pull at the tied knots of the bandages that I’m going to change out.

Applejack stands and stumbles back away from me with indecent haste as the old wraps unravel and start to fall away. She turns her back to me and I can hear her fumbling with the doorknob.

“Ah’ll uh… go get us some breakfast,” Applejack stammers as she finally wrenches the door open. “You come on down whenever yer ready.”

Whenever I’ve gotten my nasty-ass scars nice and hidden, she means. Her eyes are fixed forward and she doesn’t look back as she flees the guest room.

It takes me all of fifteen minutes to pull away the bandages, swab the area with a disinfecting pad, and then replace the wraps with clean ones.

Aria told me to have someone else take care of this, but I’ve been managing my own care for months. I didn’t tell her that, I just nodded along so she’d let me go. I’m not going to ask Applejack to do this. I don’t need her gawking at my arms and chest while she hogties my arm backward, as she pretends not to be disgusted.

I’m fine on my own.

The clean bandages feel better, and I give them a few good tugs to make sure they’re secure before standing up and tucking everything away.

Everything but the picture of Sunset.

I run a hand over it, letting my thumb trail over her face, and smile a little.

“Day one,” I say quietly. “I promised Flutters I’d try and… and I know you’d be pissed if I broke another promise, so I’ll try.”

Sunset is silent. The half-expected rasp of blades doesn’t come, and I take that as a good sign.

“I love you,” I say after another moment.

Then I pat the frame, pull on my thin, long sleeve sports jacket, and head down to breakfast.

I can smell coffee, and that goes a long way towards lifting my mood. I want to ignore everything that happened last night and just get to work. I want to do something, anything, so long as it keeps me distracted.

“Hey, AJ,” I call out as I make the bottom landing and turn into the kitchen. “What’s the plan for the day?”

I come around the corner to the familiar kitchen and an unfamiliar atmosphere. There’s tension, and a tightness to the air that I’ve never felt in the normally laconic household, and the source of it exists between the two occupants.

The first, Applejack, is moving with that odd, mechanical motion at the counter, moving eggs and bacon from pan to plate before pouring coffee from the carafe. I wrinkle my nose. It smells a little burnt, but at least it smells better than the crap Millie always serves.

I know why there’s tension though.

Apple Bloom is the other occupant, and she’s eating a bowl of cereal with her eyes glued to her phone that lays a few inches to the right of her bowl, occasionally reaching out to tap at the screen before going back to eating.

Neither sister says a word to each other, but I guess at this point there’s nothing left to say.

“AJ?” I say again, and a fork clatters against the plate she’s holding as she looks up at me. “You good?”

She blinks like a deer caught in the lights for a moment before giving a snort and a forced chuckle as she fixes her stetson on her head.

“Sure am,” she says in a painfully jovial tone.

Her eyes flick between me and Apple Bloom. Applejack really does have absolutely no poker face whatsoever. I hope she never develops a gambling addiction because she’d be broke in ten seconds flat.

“Cool,” I say flatly.

I glance down at Apple Bloom, and the moment Applejack sees my gaze fall over her younger sister the tension seems to double up. Not from Bloom, though. The youngest daughter of the Apple Clan is as apathetic of the space around her as she was when I saw her last night.

Now, in the light of day, she actually looks worse, rather than better. Her face is as hard-edged and grim as I remember from the night before but she’s also paler than she probably should be. Her eyes are still distant and glassy, like she’s barely paying attention to the world around her, and her bruises...

The bruises are almost gone, except for the worst ones, and even her lip is healed up.

I take a seat at the table, studiously ignoring the tension, and Applejack sets down a plate in front of me, eggs and toast, no bacon, and a cup of strong coffee.

I’ve definitely had worse breakfasts.

“So where’s Granny and Mac?” I ask between bites of egg.

“Mac’s tidyin’ up the East Orchard fer us, a’fore movin’ t’the North one,” Applejack says. “Granny’s still sleepin’.”

“Took’er meds,” Apple Bloom remarks, drawing a withering glare from her older sister that passes over her like water on nylon. “Ain’t less’n act’a god would wake’er up, and even he’d hafta raise his voice.”

“Apple Bloom!” Applejack’s voice is a harsh, reedy snap of ironwire. Her whole expression is trembling like she’s barely restraining herself and her normally soft green eyes are furious with something I’d almost call hate.

I frown at that. “Meds?”

I look up at Applejack who glowers silently at her sister, who I turn to next. Apple Bloom doesn’t say another word, though, she just slowly eats her cereal as if she hadn’t just been snapped at by her sister.

Okay then.

My eggs and toast go down a little less easy, but the coffee helps. Applejack finishes a little before I do, tidies up her own dishes, then starts for the door.

I only know she gets to it when I hear the stumble and the knock of knee against a wood frame, and the harsh, ragged cussing that follows it before-

“DAGNABBIT APPLE BLOOM!”

A backpack is sent hurtling into the kitchen to crash into the kitchen table. I only barely manage to rescue my coffee cup, snatching it up from the surface an instant before the impact rocks the sturdy piece of furniture. I hear something break inside the backpack, and a moment later Applejack follows it in looking livid.

“What’ve Ah told y’all ‘bout takin’ yer goddamn crap upstairs with ya when ya get home!?” She snarls.

Apple Bloom stares down at the mess of milk spattered around her bowl that had been rocked when the backpack struck the table for a long moment before answering.

“Sorry, AJ… fergot,” she mutters, leaning down to grab the backpack and pull it into her lap. “I’ll take it up with me next time.”

“Y’all better,” Applejack says tightly, then turns and stomps back out of the kitchen.

“And clean up that mess!” she shouts as she storms out of the house and slams the door behind her.

For a moment, it’s quiet, and I look over at Apple Bloom who, to my surprise is already looking at me with those cold, rose-apple eyes of hers.

“Like Ah said last night,” Apple Bloom says unprompted over her spilled milk. “Ah know.”

Yeah, I guess she does.

I put my dishes in the sink and run some water over them, then turn back to Apple Bloom who’s already swept her side of the table clean and gone back to eating what’s left of her cereal.

“Sounds like something broke in your backpack,” I say as I step past her.

Apple Bloom glances down at the pack in her lap, then shrugs and looks back up at me. “Probably mah art project.”

“That’s bad right?” I say with a raised eyebrow.

She just shrugs again.

“Weren’t like it was gonna get better’n an ‘F’ anyway,” Apple Bloom says. “Teachers don’t like us anymore’n the kids.”

I just grunt and nod, then turn my back on her and walk out of the farmhouse to start heading towards the orchard where we’re supposed to be working today. It’s warm for being so early in the morning, or maybe I just don’t feel the cold like I used to. It’s certainly less cold than some of the nights I spent in the East End.

It’ll get colder though. Winter’s coming to Canterlot, and those are always nasty as hell.

I’m halfway to the orchard when someone calls my name. A low, heavy, phlegmatic voice I haven’t heard in a while, and I turn to see Applejack’s older brother flagging me down from near the treeline.

Big Mac’s name is more than a name, it’s a presence. Mac is built like the trees he takes care of, tall, broad, sturdy, and powerful. His shoulders are like the broad boughs of an elder apple tree, and his arms are thick, wind-roughened, and muscular.

Most people have this idea that strong guys look like they do in movies, with torsos the shape of a corn chip, all sharp and angular, but that’s bullshit. Anyone who knows Big Mac knows that’s bullshit. Real strength is barrel-chested, heavy, and thick, with rough slabs of muscle that comes from manual labor, not sculpting exercise.

You’ll never see a guy like Big Mac in a gym, but I’d bet my photograph of Sunset that Mac could trounce any ten of those guys and only barely break a sweat if that.

“Hey, Mac,” I say as I turn and trot over to him.

“Dash,” he drawls around a sprig of wheat as he steps out from under the shade of the tree he was under. “How’s things?”

“Rough,” I say quietly.

I always liked Mac. A man of few words, this guy.

“Mm…” he nods wordlessly, and I feel a shiver go up my spine as his eyes trace away from my chest and down my arms to the cuff of my jacket where a hint of bandage is still peeking out.

I tug the cuff down a little, but-

“Hard times,” he says after a moment, his eyes are the same bright green as his sister’s, but unlike hers, they don’t flinch.

“Guess so.” I run a hand up my arms, and I grimace and sigh. “Applejack told you, huh?”

“Ain’t judgin’,” Mac says.

I actually believe that. Mac is probably the least judgmental person I’ve ever met. The very essence of the live-and-let-live philosophy. So long as no one bothers him or his, he’s pretty much the most accepting guy in the whole world.

“That’d be a first,” I say honestly.

“AJ took it rough,” he says after a moment. “Rougher’n ya know.”

I shrug and kick at the sod under my foot as I shove my hands in the pockets of my jacket and look up to meet his eyes directly.

“I won’t talk about it again,” I say finally. “I told her to forget. It doesn’t matter.”

Mac shakes his head. His brow creases slightly, and on anyone else that would be a full-scale frown as he looks me up and down.

“Ain’t sayin’ that,” Mac says. “Just sayin’ it ain’t in’er t’handle it, but she cares.”

I swallow back whatever response was building in the back of my throat. I don’t even give it the credence needed to identify it, I just swallow, give Mac the best smile I can manage, and shrug one more time.

“It’s fine,” I say. “I’m fine… so just forget about it, okay?”

Big Mac sighs, shakes his head, then straightens and nods to me. As he walks past me, headed vaguely in the direction of the North Orchards, he pauses and settles one enormous hand on my shoulder and looks down at me.

“Ah’ve known ya since you were a saplin’, Dash,” he rumbles. “Ah know what fine looks like on ya, so if ya need t’talk, mah door’s open.”

Then he’s gone, moving again like a mountain that had gotten up and decided to find a different view of the horizon.

“Nothing to talk about,” I say quietly to his back. I don’t know if he hears me, and honestly it doesn’t matter.

I promised I’d try, and I will. I’ll fail like I usually do, but I’ll try.