We Are Legion

We wake up early in the morning. The fire pit is still burning faintly, and the embers are nice and hot. It’s enough to chase out the worst of the cold and between that, the mattress, and two warm bodies wrapped around me, it’s the most comfortable I’ve been in weeks.

Applejack will be mad because I’m not home, and probably relieved at the same time. If I’m not home, I’m not working… not doing my chores. But at the same time I know she hates me. She hates having me around. Hates looking at me.

I’m just a reminder that her friend is dead for no reason.

Worse than dead, honestly.

She didn’t see what Sunset turned into, in the end. She didn’t see the hate in Sunset’s eyes… or feel the bite of her claws. Applejack never saw what my little plan really created, and that’s probably a good thing. If she ever knew what really happened to Sunset in that place, she’d probably just kill me.

Sometimes, I think that would be a relief.

“Hey, you up?” Scootaloo asks groggily.

“Yeah,” I mutter.

“Cool, got any food?”

I sit up sullenly and cast my eyes around for my bag. Sweetie Belle mumbles something unintelligible in her sleep as she tightens her grip on my arm, and I smile a little as I reach out to brush her messy two-tone hair from her face.

“Yeah,” I say after a minute. “Stole some stuff from the kitchen ‘fore Ah went t’school… figured this might happen.”

“Always the gal with the plan,” Scootaloo says with a grin.

I don’t smile. My last plan was shitty on a scale that beggared belief, so that wasn’t exactly what you’d call a compliment. I extract myself from Sweetie and plod over to where my bag lays at the edge of the mattress on hands and knees, fish around inside, then pull out a small tupperware.

“S’a little busted, but Ah reckon it tastes fine,” I say as I crack it open and pull out a broken half of a fritter to pass to Scootaloo.

Scootalloo takes it gratefully and starts eating.

“Mmph, no pwoblem~,” she mumbles around the mouthful of pastry before swallowing. “Ah! I haven’t eaten since like, yesterday morning. I’m starving.”

I’m not, but I don’t say it. My stomach feels like a stone.

“Here,” I pass her the other half. “Ah got one fer me and another fer Sweetie.”

“Awesome.” She grins as she takes the fritter and shoves it in her mouth.

I pull out the long bottle of water I brought and sip some down before passing it to Scootaloo. I pull out the other fritter while I move around to Sweetie’s side of the mattress and settle down beside her near the fire.

“Mornin’,” I say softly.

She stares up at me with a chalky expression. I would give anything—anything—to see the light come back to her eyes.

“Morning,” she says softly.

“Hungry?” I hold up part of a fritter. “Ya oughta eat somethin’.”

She takes it wordlessly and starts nibbling. Her heart isn’t in it, though. Like me, she’s not really feeling all that hungry, but she’s trying. For my sake and for Scootaloo, she’s trying.

It breaks my heart.

“So…” Scootaloo starts, lowering the other half of her fritter, “...what I said last night, y’know?”

Sweetie and I both look over at her.

“Y’mean ‘bout money?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“What about it?” Sweetie chimes in sullenly. “No one who knows us would hire us, and even if they did then the moment they found out what we did we’d be gone.”

I grimace. She’s not wrong. Time was that there were a number of family friends that would have hired me and any of my friends, at least seasonally, but I’m the black sheep of the family now. News travels fast along the branches of the Apple Tree, and over the last year, and especially at Christmas, it was made pretty clear that I wasn’t one of them anymore.

Not really.

“I know,” Scootaloo says. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

I raise an eyebrow, and start to open my mouth to ask what she is talking about then, when it hits me.

“Scoots—”

“I didn’t say it was a good idea,” she says bitterly before taking another bite of the fritter, chewing it and swallowing it down. “B—ack! W-water!”

She flails for the bottle and I toss it to her. Scootaloo slugs down a few swallows, sighs and then laughs as she caps the bottle again and passes it over.

“A-Anyway, I’m not saying it’s good or right or anything,” she continues. “But we’re not exactly looking at a lot of options and… and if we keep going like this, it’s gonna end bad.”

I look around the miserable ruin of Ormond. It’s already bad. That this place—this forgotten, desolate strip of snowbound hell that barely has a roof and that no reasonable person would set foot in during the winter—is our refuge and home-away-from-home pretty much says it all.

And Scootaloo’s right, it’ll get worse.

“What are we supposed t’do? Knock over a convenience store?” I snap.

“Why not?”

Both Scootaloo and I both turn our heads slowly to look over at Sweetie Belle, who had just spoken up to say something that… that didn’t sound like Sweetie Belle at all.

She gets up from the mattress and plods over to the side of the dying firepit to grab the poker and stoke the embers.

“Are they gonna hate us more?” She continues softly. “Beat us up more? Knock us around more? Mess with our stuff more?”

Sweetie looks up and over the fire at the pair of us staring at her. Her eyes are shadowed with exhaustion and heavy with gloom, but there’s something else, something deeper that’s lying just past the misery.

“Why does it matter?”

“Why does ‘knockin’ over a convenience store’ matter?” I ask with a weak laugh. “Y-Yer kiddin’ right?”

I look between Sweetie and Scootaloo. Their faces are hard and bitter. They’re angry. Hell, I’m angry. I hate everything about this. I hate going to school, I hate coming home, I hate the looks everyone, even my own family, gives me any time I walk into the room. I hate the fact that I made one decision and it pretty much ruined the lives of everyone I love.

But this is…

“Seriously, Bloom,” Scootaloo says finally. “Why not? Sweetie’s right, what’ve we got to lose?”

“Maybe we go t’jail?” I say blithely.

“We’re still minors,” Sweetie says. Her voice is barely a whisper over the sound of the poker scraping at the hot ashes of the firepit. “Even if we mess it up we’ll just go to juvie, and there’s only one in the area so we’ll still be together, and then…”

“Then at least we’ll be away from everyone else,” Scootaloo says sharply. “Everyone already looks at us like we’re a bunch of murderers, so some petty theft shouldn’t turn anyone’s worldview inside out.”

I open my mouth to argue but nothing comes out. I should be able to argue against this, right? There should be a reason not to do what my friends are saying we should do… right?

Except Scootaloo and Sweetie are making a good point. Everyone already treats us like garbage. Our families won’t look at us and when they do it's just enough to make us wish they hadn’t. We’re pariahs at school, or worse. We’re everyones’ punching bag because nobody wants to be the one to stick their neck out on account of Anon-A-Miss.

Not even the teachers.

Blind eyes all around.

“Girls this…” I look between them, and a cold knot forms in my chest, and I trail off and look down. After a long moment of silence I look back up at my two best friends.

“Ah guess… Ah guess this is where we’re at, huh?” I say.

“Guess so,” Scootaloo says grimly.

“Robbin’ people?” I say again.

“Robbing stores,” Sweetie corrects gently. “Stores aren’t people.”

She has a point. We weren’t mugging people. If we did do this, then we’d be taking money out of a till, not out of someone’s pocket. That made it a little easier to think of doing this.

“”I’m tired of always… always getting hurt,” Sweetie says in an empty voice. “I’m so tired of hurting… I just want to go away.”

The way she says ‘go away’ puts a chill down my spine, the look on Scootaloo’s face tells me I’m not the only one.

“O-Okay, so say we do this thing,” I start, standing up and looking over at Sweetie. “How we gonna not get caught?”

“Masks and gloves,” Scootaloo says.

“Y’all got money fer that?” I ask dryly.

“We’ve got gloves…” Sweetie says, then trails off for a moment before looking back up at the pair of us, “and masks.”

“We do?” Scootaloo asks.

I stare at Sweetie for a moment before closing my eyes and groaning. I know what she’s talking about and that just sounds stupid.

“C’mon, Sweetie, ya can’t be serious!” I say, earning a questioning look from Scootaloo.

“Do you have a better idea?” Sweetie asks. “They’re molded to our faces, so we know they fit!”

“Wait, those things?!” Scootaloo barks.

Then she starts laughing. Cackling, really. She rolls back onto the mattress and kicks her legs as she starts to laugh to the point that she’s not even really breathing anymore. I can’t help but smile a little at that, and even Sweetie Belle cracks a small grin as Scootaloo rolls around on the dirty mattress and howls.

“Th-Those things are so creepy, though!” Scootaloo says finally, and breathlessly.

“It weren’t mah idea for’em t’look like that,” I say, looking pointedly at Sweetie, who blushes. “But Ah guess fair’s fair, they’d work fine, right?”

“Yeah,” Scootaloo agrees. “And we never turned them in for the art project because, let’s face it, if we’d brought them to class they’d have just ended up broken.”

“Sweetie’s already got broke, remember?” I say. “When AJ kicked mah bag across the kitchen the day after Rainbow showed up?”

“Broke, or improved?” Scootaloo asks, wiggling her eyebrows. “Seriously, I think you improved it.”

The truth was we knew that Sweetie’s would never be accepted. The teacher would have taken one look at it and failed her on the spot. Rather than let that happen to Sweetie, Scootaloo and I just left our projects at home and told the teacher that we hadn’t done them. All three of us got zero percent on our projects that day, and afterward Sweetie hugged us and cried because she was so happy we were her friends.

All-in-all? Worth it.

“So… masks, gloves… we good?”

“Weapons.”

Scootaloo and I both look up at Sweetie Belle in shock, and she raises an eyebrow at us.

“What?” she asks. “We’re… we’re robbing a place, right? So… we need to threaten them with something, don’t we?”

I hadn’t thought of that, and if I’m being honest it doesn’t really sit right with me. But Sweetie’s right. If we just barged into a gas mart and demanded money with our bare hands, the only thing the clerk would do before calling the cops is laugh at us.

“Ah got a steel huntin’ knife,” I say quietly. “Heavy old thing, too. It was mah papaw’s.”

Scootaloo twists around, turns to the kindling chest, and drags it out, pops it open, and fishes around in it for a while before drawing out an old keyhole saw with a straight wood handle, a pointed tip, and a serrated metal blade. She closes it up before holding the tool up with a faint grimace.

Nothing cut by that was gonna heal up quick or easy, but it’d put a scare into whoever she threatened with it.

“I have something I can use back at the house,” Sweetie says. “And the masks?”

“Back at mah place, where we made’em,” I say.

“Your creepy chainsaw massacre basement?” Scootaloo says, nudging me in the ribs.

She laughs, but the truth is that none of us like going in basements anymore. Not since we got strung up in one by Sunset after she went batshit on us. We did our project down there because we needed the tools and the privacy, but we got out of that place as fast as we could every night.

“Yeah, yeah.” I swat at Scootaloo’s shoulder. “I’ll grab’em, and we’ll meet up here tomorrow?”

Scootaloo nods, and we both look over at Sweetie Belle who’s staring down at the fire and the dying embers. The poker is in her hand, buried in the meat of the largest log, and her eyes are glazed over as she watches it burn.

“Sweetie?”

She starts when I say her name, and looks up at me with wide eyes.

“You okay?” Scootaloo sits up straighter.

Sweetie Belle lets out a slow breath that carries a touch of mist even though she’s standing right over the flames.

“I’m fine,” Sweetie says finally. “Just cold… uhm, I’ll go grab my stuff, then come back here, okay?”

Scootaloo and I share a glance.

“Like, right back here?” Scootaloo asks. “You’re not going to stay—”

I elbow Scootaloo in the ribs and she shuts up.

“Ah’ll meetcha back here, then,” I say. “Once Ah grab the masks.”

“You don’t have to,” Sweetie says.

“Gonna do it anyway,” I reply.

Despite herself, she smiles at me, and that small, lonely expression reminds me of why I’m agreeing to all of this. Whether or not we’re willing to say it, and whether or not her family wants to admit it, Sweetie Belle is in danger.

Real, serious danger.

Neither of us know how to help her any other way than just being there for her, and if we’re apart for too long the Greys settle in, and I know that’s when Sweetie gets to her worst. I think part of why she does what she does to herself is to escape the constant dull nothingness of the Greys.

Part of me wishes I could just get her medical help, but I know if anyone finds out what she’s doing they’ll take her away from the two of us. They don’t know about the Greys, and they probably can’t even tell that it happens because, I think, it comes from that ‘other’ place.

Hell, maybe it’s just Sunset cursing us from beyond the grave.

Guess that’d be fair enough.

“Thank you,” Sweetie says softly.

I shrug, and look over at Scootaloo who nods.

“I’ll be here too,” she says. “But probably later.”

“Sounds fine t’me,” I say. “Ready?”

“Nope,” Scootaloo replies with a dry laugh. “But let’s go anyway.”

Sweet Apple Acres ain’t what it used to be. Not that it ain’t still a big farm that supplies apples all over Canterlot, because it’s still that. No, what changed is the folks that keep the farm.

Once upon a time, I guess we were a family.

Me and Applejack and Big Mac and Granny Smith. Together, the four of us, plus some help from Applejack’s friends now and again and from seasonal hands when we could afford it, kept the place in good repair. More than that, though, we kept it a home.

The place was always warm and welcoming. There was always a place at the table for a stranger who needed a bite to eat, or a friend who needed a place to stay for the night.

Things changed when Sunset died.

Everything changed when Sunset died.

That’s when my world started to spin down the toilet, and take everything I loved with it.

Not that I’m blaming Sunset, mind you. I’m not. I can’t really blame a dead girl for dying especially since I had a hand in the killing. No, I know whose fault it is because I have to look her in the eye every time I glance at a mirror.

It was my bright idea. Whatever Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle say, it will always have been my idea.

It’s late morning by the time I ride back into the familiar orchards of the acres. Thankfully, Applejack isn’t around. If she were, I’d probably have to waste a couple of hours getting another lecture about doing my chores from my big sister all while watching her visibly try not to beat the everloving bejeezus out of me.

Applejack never did have the keenest grip on her temper, and she loses it more often than not around me. Fortunately, that mostly means yelling and throwing stuff rather than hitting me.

For now, anyway.

I glance around furtively as I bike past the farmhouse and turn towards the barn. The old mammoth structure has definitely seen better days, mostly because we just can’t afford to keep it up as well as we used to, but it’s still holding together well enough.

I slip inside the barn and throw the kickstand on my bike before peeking out of the main doors. Still no sign of Applejack. She ain’t in town, I know that much for sure because the truck is still here, and if I’m really lucky she’s out in the north orchard mending that busted fence. It’s on the ass end of the property so she’d have just loaded up a wheelbarrow and rolled it out there so as not to make a bunch of trips back and forth.

Grabbing my backpack, I make a run around the east side of the barn towards the cellar door, pull it open, and step inside. It’s dark and I keep it that way. Ever since I got back from the Trials my night vision has been as keen as anything. I can pick out the shapes of the steps and the whole of the cellar with barely an effort, and I move past the stored apples and cider barrels to the rear of the basement where the workbench is.

I hate being down here. The musty smell and feeling of being underground reminds me too much of the basement in Sunset’s Trial.

It reminds me too much of being on a hook.

The skin just under my shoulder and over my heart itches and aches. There’s no scar there, where the pike of the butchers hook split through my skin to suspend me above the ground, but I can still feel the phantom pains of it.

Ignoring the ache, I move to the workbench and kneel down to grab the small wood box I’d stashed our art projects in after Sweetie’s was broken.

They’re covered and wrapped in a thick burlap cloth to keep dust and rats off. I don’t know why I wanted to keep them safe, because it’s not like I thought we’d ever use them at the time. Maybe it’s just because it’s something the three of us made together.

Maybe that’s enough.

I unwrap them one at a time to check them over and make sure they’re still in good shape. They’re all carved from good, solid wood, treated for water, and coated with primer, then painted a dull, wall-plaster white.

The first one is mine, and the broad, crude, toothy smile I daubed onto it with my fingers grins at me underneath eyes that are just circles with notches carved down the middle of them that go straight through and serve as eyeholes.

Next is Scootaloo’s mask which is almost identical to mine. That was kind of the point. The smile is the same, but the circular eyes have a center point that’s been hollowed out by a hand drill instead of notched vertically to provide vision.

And last…

I grimace as I pick up Sweetie Belle’s mask.

When Applejack broke it, I wanted to be angry. Maybe I was angry somewhere deep beneath the Greys, but I just couldn’t reach it. Instead, after she broke it, I just went to the cellar and tried to put it back together. I knew there was no fixing it, but I tried anyway.

Sweetie hadn’t even managed to paint the smile on yet, and she never would. It broke into three pieces when Applejack kicked it. Bad luck she managed to land her foot right in the middle of the darn thing before pitching it at me. I don’t know if it was the kick or the throw that broke it for good, and I guess it doesn’t matter, but it still makes me mad.

I sanded the rough, broken edges of the three fragments so they’d fit together kind of like the pieces of a puzzle. I drilled small holes along the broken, sanded edges, then took some nails, pliers, and a spool of wire, and wrapped the heads nails in the wire before slotting them into the holes. Each nail was connected to another one across from it, and it was a little like stitching something together using metal. Once they were in, I twisted the nails so they’d pull together, one after the other, until the pieces of the broken mask fit tight. Then I turned it over and braced the mask against the desk to carefully flatten the point of each nail with a hammer until it rested flush against the wood.

Once that was done, I gave it a metallic paint finish to make the nails blend in, and fixing it took me the better part of a night, but when I finished it was at least wearable.

Not that it would matter for our class, but it was Sweetie Belle’s and fixing it was the best I could do.

I lift the crudely wired-together mask out last, and turn it this and that, examining it for flaws or flexes in the wood, before setting it back down, satisfied that it was still intact.

“Good morning.”

The mask clatters out of my hand as I whip around, and for a moment I think I’m trapped in a nightmare. There’s something in the dark. Something with twisting arms like spider-legs and scorpion stingers. Something waiting to pull me apart and put me back together all wrong—ALL WRONG!

They twist and chitter and snap, and… and…

I blink away the terror-fueled vision as Twilight Sparkle steps closer, her silhouette resolving out of the nightmare darkness, and into reality. The lights are still out, but she doesn’t seem bothered by it, she’s just staring down at me with a faint smile.

“Sorry,” she says softly. “Did I startle you?”

All of the clothes Twilight is wearing are Applejack’s, from the thick sweater to the flannel button up, to the heavy jeans and boots. All of it is just a little too big on her, which actually manages to make it look endearing more than clumsy.

“Ah’m fine,” I say quietly.

My voice comes out dull and faded, and I grit my teeth as I can feel my senses starting to slip into the malaise of the Greys.

“You didn’t come home last night,” Twilight says.

I shrug as I turn and wrap the masks up in the burlap before Twilight can see them, and stick the whole mess of them into my backpack.

“Just needed t’grab somethin’,” I say as I stand up and sling the strap of the backpack over my shoulder. “Ah’m takin’ off.”

Twilight doesn’t move out of my way, instead she just eyes me for a long moment before glancing over my shoulder at the workbench, then back down at me.

“We got a call yesterday that you weren’t in any of your afternoon classes,” Twilights says finally. “And I got another one this morning that you didn’t show up to your morning ones.”

“Bet AJ’s livid, huh?” I say dully.

“She was pretty mad last night,” Twilight agrees. “But… I didn’t tell her about this morning.”

I raise an eyebrow at that.

“Why?”

“Because I think you probably have a good reason for skipping your classes,” Twilight says gently. “You’re a lot smarter than anyone seems to give you credit for, and I think if you’re skipping then it’s because you know what you’re doing.”

Snorting derisively, I try to move past Twilight, but before I get past her she puts a hand out and sets it against my shoulder. The moment she touches me a cold jolt goes down my spine and, briefly, my ears are filled with that chittering noise again that turns my legs to lead and my bowels to jelly.

Even though it makes no sense, I’m suddenly terrified of her. I don’t want to look up because part of me is absolutely sure I’m just going to see that twisting darkness. I force myself to do it anyway, and the moment I do the fear is gone.

Twilight is staring down at me with worry on her face.

“Are you okay?” Twilight asks. “I know your sister… and I know she’s angry, at you and herself, and at a lot of things, and I know I’m not really your family, but I still care about you, Bloom.”

I let out a slow sigh, then take a deep breath and shrug again, but I don’t pull away from her. The Greys are settling in, dulling the pain along with everything else, but some part of her is breaking through it for whatever reason.

Staving it off.

“Ah’m just tryin’ t’take care’a mah friends,” I say. “And if AJ don’t like it, she can go sit on a fencepost’n spin.”

Twilight laughs a little, to my surprise, and then nods.

“I won’t tell her I saw you,” she says finally. “And I definitely won’t tell her you said that.”

I stare down at her hand for a moment, then look back up at her.

“Thanks.”

“I’m on your side, Bloom,” she says as she lowers herself a little. “I promise, okay?”

“You’d pretty much be the only one,” I reply with a dark chuckle.

“That’s okay with me.”

Maybe I misjudged Twilight. I always thought she was a little odd, especially with all the times she tried to ‘engage’ with me, and talk to me about stuff. I figured she was just trying to suck up to Applejack by being nice to her little sister, but the way she’s talking I think she might actually care.

It’s… kind of nice.

“I’ll try and smooth things over with the school,” Twilight says, smiling. “Take the day off, okay? Come back when you’re ready. I’ll be here, just take care of yourself.”

Letting out a slow breath, I nod.

“Thanks, Twi’,” I say. “Ah… Ah really do appreciate it.”

“Take care of yourself,” she says as she straightens out. “Now, I’ve got to grab a few things for Jackie. She left some of her tools here and didn’t want to walk all the way back from the north fence to get them.”

“Ah figured,” I reply.

“And be careful.”

I pause, then look back at her. She’s still standing in the dark, staring at me, and smiling. Maybe I’m just imagining it but the way she said that…

Shaking my head, I turn away again to leave quickly so as not to catch the eye of Big Mac, just in case he was coming back from wherever he is on the property. Also just in case Applejack decided to say screw it and meet her girlfriend half way.

Hopping on my bike, I knock the kickstand up and take off back to Ormond with the masks. I wonder if Twilight would’ve been so keen on me going my own way if she knew what I was planning to do later on? Probably not, and if this went south she’d probably kick herself for not turning me in to my sister.

Not that it matters now.

We’ve made our decisions.