Winter in Ponyville was not a regular occurrence in the literal sense of the term. It was irregular; it happened when a winter was needed, not because it had to. Applejack knew the system well; a request would be submitted to the Town Hall, where it would be processed, approved, subject to a series of standard requirements, and if all went well, submitted to Cloudsdale. As a former farmer, Applejack was typically well aware of when a winter was coming, because half the time she had submitted the request for it herself.
Now she was a regular citizen, and a largely irrelevant one at that, she had no such forewarning, and this had meant that her first winter alone had been unexpected. She had been unprepared and poorly equipped; most of her winterwear had been left at the farm with what remained of her ‘family’, and she hadn’t thought to buy, borrow, or make new clothes, get thicker, warmer curtains, or even a smouldering magic stone to help heat her modest flat.
It meant that when she woke up that morning, just past dawn (she was in the habit of waking up as the sun rose, though very gradually this habit was wearing off), she was cold. Her shoulders, which had become exposed from under her blanket, were ice-cold, and her feet, which poked out from the other end, were freezing; she could barely even feel her toes. She immediately contracted inwards, trying to curl in on herself to spread some of the warmth from her chest and stomach to the extremities, and pull the underheated parts of her back under a blanket that was simply too thin to adequately stave off the chill. She breathed out, and to her dismay, a cloud of fog, faint but present, emerged from her mouth. The temperature inside her new home was nearly as cold as outside.
Perhaps barely being able to feel her battered body was a blessing in disguise; every week, her bones got battered to the point where any movement sent stabbing jolts of pain through her nervous system. Her breasts were beaten and bruised, her knuckles and hands scabby and torn, her thighs, calves, and feet smouldered with an ache that never really went away, and her face? Her face straight up hurt all day, every day. Perhaps being numb from the cold wasn’t as bad as it sounded. Then again, absence of feeling was its own kind of pain. Applejack was at a crossroads of bullshit agony and no direction she could pick provided a satisfactory destination.
She grimaced. She didn’t want to wake up and continue to experience the crushing reality of being Applejack, but at the same time staying in this frigid in-between state was an even less enviable prospect. She sighed, blinked, and suddenly wished she had worn more overnight than a pair of boxers far too breezy for a mare her size. A set of nice, warm silk pyjamas would have had more mileage, since at least then it would cover her arms and legs down to her feet, but Applejack preferred to sleep in loose underwear (or, in summer, none at all), even if it meant wearing a stallion’s underwear and not telling anypony. Socks would also have helped immensely, but Applejack could never find more than one at a time when she wanted them.
She wished that somepony had warned her that a snap winter was on the way, but then again the only ponies who might have known about it were the Baltimare Apples who were running the farm along with Granny, and there was no way they would have told anyone, least of all her.
If there was one benefit to the cold, it was that she woke up quickly. Discomfort added a level of immediacy to the ordeal that streamlined the process; she didn’t dawdle or waste time. She stood up, bristled only momentarily at the icy air on her exposed chest, and then in a businesslike, almost military manner dressed herself, first covering herself below the waist, then assembling her upper half. Bra first, then vest, then shirt, then unwashed jumper. The jumper in particular had the semi-damp qualities of an item of clothing that still carried just enough sweat on it to be clammy, but not quite so much as to be unwearable and utterly unpresentable. These were close to all the clothes she had; a patchwork mix of items she had been wearing when she moved away from the Acres, bits and pieces she had bought on loose change, and items generously donated by Carrot Top. There hadn’t been much else she had brought with her beyond clothes, either… some dog food for Winona, and a large packet of one-hundred or so apple seeds that she had spitefully stolen. The Apple Clan probably hadn’t even noticed they had gone missing.
She didn’t bother with socks or shoes; shortly after having breakfast and coffee she was going to have a shower, and there really wasn’t much point. She was only dressing now to keep herself warm and also because she wanted to take her trash out before then, and she couldn’t really justify walking out the front door bare-breasted. Especially considering the cold.
She could have showered, she thought, but she felt that showering was when her real day started. She wanted to be ready to go immediately after she finished her shower; it was how she was.
Applejack flexed her fingers. All she felt was the stiff numbness of cold making the joints of her bones click and catch on themselves, despite the bloody scabs and torn skin around the knuckles and fingers. She breathed out, her breath fogging up. Her house… or rather, the upper floor of Carrot Top’s house was freezing cold. Carrot did what she could but the heating just didn’t really make it to the upper floors, clearly. Her impromptu landlord hadn’t really expected anypony to need her flat long-term, which to be fair had never been the plan to begin with. Applejack was sure all of Ponyville had thought, along with her, that her leaving the farm would have been a result of a temporary falling out. As things had only worsened, that theory was put to rest.
As Applejack prepared her coffee and toast, she ran through her chores for the day. There was shopping, of course; she was starting to run low on food. She needed to organise her participation in a rodeo that would take place in several weeks… that she could do at the Town Hall before getting supplies. She had to find time to eat, which wouldn’t be hard, but rather finding what to eat, and where, was a mental struggle that always felt more gruelling than it needed to be.
She also needed to find some more stable work. Nights at the ring were well-paying enough, but were too subject to inconsistent changes making it difficult to plan long-term… and Applejack did want to plan long-term. Before the changes, before the Long Night, she had never had to worry about long-term plans… she knew exactly how her life was going to go. Now, not so much, and the uncertainty gnawed at her mind, leaving her in a perpetual state of moderate stress and anxiety. Of course, what would her plan be? Move to Appleoosa with the Appleoosan Apples? No. She couldn’t face being anywhere near her family, and though Braeburn was sympathetic, he was as much of a coward as Big Macintosh had been for not standing up to Granny Smith. Thinking about all the bridges she had burned made her more anxious and afraid than ever, and so Applejack opted to simply not think about it at all.
Her eyes scanned a newspaper; periodically there were listings for land for either sale or let, the kind of land that could be farmed. There were often fast-moving plots of land near Fillydelphia, or Canterlot, as the crops their would change depending on what was popular at the time. Applejack had often considered starting again somewhere else but often… thought better of it. She didn’t like the idea of being in direct competition with her old home, and worse, hated the idea of losing to them. It was a thought she often compartmentalised ‘for another time’.
Underneath the anxiety at her situation, though, was a hotter emotion, a bubbling, broiling bitterness that simmered within her at all times, and a sinister shame that kept her asking how exactly she had allowed herself to fall so low. She kept a lid on it, allowing it to fuel her when needed, but also keeping it hidden. She had to.
Winona pit-pattered beside her, looking up lovingly at the crust of her toast. Applejack raised an eyebrow playfully.
“Hmm? You want this, huh?” she asked, rhetorically. Winona’s yearning look in her eyes was a signal that transcended language barriers, and lack thereof. Applejack gave the crust to her dog, and then gave her a gentle pat on the head. “Good girl. I need to feed you too, now y’mention it.”
Shopping was always more of an ordeal than it had to be, despite the market being much closer to her new home than the Acres had been (Carrot Top’s house was just north of the Town Hall, halfway between the square and the edge of town, and less than a ten-minute walk to the market). This wasn’t because of the limited funds at Applejack’s disposal, but because due to ‘recent events’, Applejack was a person-non-grata amongst the Apple clan, and they always had a presence at the market selling their goods. This meant that every time she walked past the apple stands, she would catch fierce and hateful glares, or worse, pitying glances followed by shy looks away. It was the latter Applejack disliked more; somehow it was more satisfying to be hated, especially by the Baltimare Apples, than it was to be seen as this broken, exiled thing by the few Apples left that actually thought their treatment of her was unfair.
Applejack didn’t care that they thought it was unfair; they had done it anyway, and if Applejack had her way, she’d kick their teeth in. At least the Apples didn’t outright harass her anymore; one swift kick had put an end to that. Still, she avoided their stall as much as she could; the very sight of their produce sickened her.
Applejack didn’t eat apples anymore; close to the entire apple supply in Ponyville was from the Sweet Apple Acres, and Applejack wouldn’t go near that stall with a ten-foot pole, no matter how much she had a craving for cinnamon-apple pie (and she nearly always did).
It was worse than that though; every time she entered the marketplace, she could feel the temperature drop. She could feel the tension as every pony in town watched her walk through, unflinchingly. She could read their thoughts; sense their disquiet and the open hostility between her and her former family.
It made her miserable. Made her angry. More than that, it made her want to hurt in a way that wasn’t just emotional, and she hated thinking that way when she was in public. It felt perverse and gross and ugly, and Applejack had quite enough negative thinking going on to add even more insecurity to the pile.
She walked towards the stand operated by Berry Punch; whilst the mare was, as her name implied, primarily purveyor of berries and berry related products, she sold a wide variety of goods, mostly vegetables and biscuits, which made her, unlike the majority of vendors in Ponyville, something of a halfway competent businesswoman. That, and Applejack rather liked Berry Punch. The mare just straight up didn’t give a shit, and this endeared her to Applejack immensely.
“Mornin’, Berry,” Applejack said, and began loading a small cloth bag with vegetables and drinks.
“Hey,” Berry said, rubbing her eyes. She must have had another late night. “You look rough.”
Applejack gestured back at Berry, in a sort of ‘speak for yourself’ manner. Berry shrugged. “Hey, I don’t have bleeding knuckles,” she replied.
Applejack examined her hand. It was true; her fists were bruised from two nights ago. Applejack often found herself recovering from various work-related injuries, many of which were avoidable. “They’re fine. They’ll heal up nicely, tougher’n before.”
“Uh-huh.” Berry scratched the side of her neck, and racked her brain to invent some topic of conversation. “That, uh, gala thing is stirring up a fuss.”
“Gala?” Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Oh, the Grand Galloping Gala?”
“You know it? Twilight Sparkle… you know the one… she was talking about it. Making a lot of noise about it actually; apparently there was some hoo-ha about her new friends getting tickets or something a while back.”
“I used to want to go. Y’know, to sell apples. Would have paid for…” Applejack winced. “Well, stuff.”
“Don’t want to go any more? You could ask Twilight if…”
“No. Don’t need to sell apples any more, remember?”
“Yeah, but it’s still a good time, they say.” Berry leaned in towards Applejack a bit. “You’re due some good times, I’d say.”
Applejack sighed, and gave Berry Punch thirteen bits. Mentally, she counted that this left her with one-hundred and seventeen. She’d have to divide that up to last her properly.
“Bye, Berry. Nice talking to you,” Applejack said, ignoring Berry’s last statement. Applejack simply didn’t see much in the way of good times coming her way any time soon.
Berry Punch rolled her eyes. “Don’t kick your cousin into my stall on your way out.”
“That was one time,” Applejack protested. “You never let things go.”
Berry Punch cackled. Applejack knew she had enjoyed the show. As much as they brought business to Ponyville, nopony really liked the Baltimare Apples. Instead of helping the stallion when he had crashed into her wares, Berry had only commented that she ought to have made her stall out of something harder, with sharper edges.
This hadn’t made her very popular with the new Apples that infested the farm, but it had made Applejack feel a bit better about the ordeal.
Lunch for Applejack was done at home that day. Not much thought went into the food; a simple sandwich, nothing fancy. Just filling fare.
Outside, she could hear the sounds of happy laughter and chatter, interspersed with wry bickering in the way friends do. Voices carried in the cold. She recognised them well; they belonged to the local celebrities of Ponyville; Twilight Sparkle and the other four Elements of Harmony.
Applejack stood up from her chair (a converted garden chair she had gotten for cheap) and went to the window to look at them.
The group, minus Rainbow Dash, who Applejack assumed was assisting with the weather at this time of day, were on their way from the Library to the outskirts of the town… looked to be in the opposite direction of the Acres. Not surprising, as far as Applejack was concerned. Ever since she had left the Acres, the place had become a dump.
There was a voyeuristic pleasure Applejack derived from spying on Ponyville’s newest gaggle of friends. They weren’t difficult to spot; even for Ponyville, they were a colourful bunch, and moreover they rarely went anywhere very quickly, on account of Twilight’s condition. Applejack would often spy Rainbow and Pinkie trotting (or flying, in Rainbow’s case) ahead whilst the slower moving group hung around Twilight as she limped after them. The hero of Ponyville had been injured during the Long Night, and ever since had been using a crutch. Damaged knee, Applejack understood.
The group must be heading to the Carousel Boutique, Applejack mused with slight nostalgia. She couldn’t imagine them wanting to spend time near the Acres, even just to enjoy the scenery; the scenery was no longer much to look at.
The Apples that had moved in from Appleoosa did what they could, but they were hamstrung by Granny’s increasingly erratic instructions. The blind foals followed her orders like she was some kind of totem. They, at least, tried as hard as they could to keep the farm afloat.
Then the Baltimare Apples came. That had changed everything. Now the usable trees had shrunk by about a quarter, and the last time Applejack had passed by the farm she had spotted aphids. Aphids! The farm was turning into a diseased pile of shit.
Applejack‘s lips curled in a rictus of irritation and morose self-deprecation. Behind the shame and hurt, however, was a simmering, constant buzz in the back of her mind… an anger that never really went away. A rage, a fury.
She looked over at her table, and the box of bits she had secured from her earnings from a few nights ago, minus what she had spent at the market. She knew well how much was in there; one-hundred and seventeen bits in total. That would be fifty for Applebloom’s savings, and the rest for herself. She’d send the fifty to Zecora. Applejack hadn’t really known what to think of the zebra mare (were they technically mares, or did they have a specific name? Applejack didn’t know.) when she first arrived, but apparently Applebloom and her were getting along well… insofar as Granny let Applebloom out of her sight. Applejack had found out that Zecora was the best intermediary to get funds to Applebloom. Applejack had no faith in the Baltimare thugs actually making sure her money made its way to Applejack’s little sister.
It wasn’t really for Applejack’s own sake that she left… Rather, she had left to try and keep Applebloom out of it as much as she could. The last thing her parents had left behind for Applejack had been her little sister, and Applejack didn’t want the hate that was brewing on the farm to poison the poor girl’s life even more than Granny’s erratic madness. Big Mac was no help; the stallion had been cowed into silence from the start. The once talkative stallion had never been good at standing up for himself, especially not to family.
There hadn’t really been a specific start to where it had gone wrong, but Applejack could hazard a guess. Granny had always been a little eccentric, but something had gone after Nightmare Moon had come by. Maybe the nightmares that plagued Ponyville lasted a little longer than they should have. It had taken a full two days for Twilight to reach the Castle and stop her, after all. Two nights of horrific nightmares in perpetual darkness. Granny hadn’t been the only one to get spooked. The Long Night, folks called it. Applejack herself had been terrified, searching for Applebloom in the dark to make sure she was safe.
After that, it was just a spiral of increasingly nonsensical decisions, instructions, kafkaesque ‘rules’ she had begun imposing, and worst of all, spite. Don’t sell the apples to the Riches; don’t harvest on Tuesday, make sure there you watch over the cider all night long, and that had just been the start. Nonsensical price decisions, cutting down trees Applejack liked, and even driving Applebloom to exhaustion during harvesting season for no reason. Eventually, Applejack couldn’t take it, and stood up to the old mare. At first it had been for Granny’s own sake… the mare needed help. Applejack could hear Granny shout in the middle of the night at living nightmares that weren’t there; hitting at walls with her cane to scare off shadows that had been banished by the Elements of Harmony a long time ago now. But first she hadn’t listened, and then she had actively started resenting Applejack for it.
Instead of taking out her paranoia on all three of the young Apples at random, Granny had focussed on Applejack, as if she had become possessed by the same nightmares that tormented Granny’s sleeping and waking moments. Applejack had always been a hard worker, but not even Applejack, with her titanic strength and fortitude, could survive being treated as a slave forever. Perhaps if she had been tougher, she could have handled it until Granny died of old age, and that would have been better for everypony involved. But she couldn’t, and Applejack had exploded at Granny; tried to get Big Mac to side with her, and put a stop to the madness.
Then, Granny summoned the clan.
Applejack had never really realised how much the Apple clan as a whole revered the old hag until Granny turned them all against her. Well, not all of them… but those that felt bad for her remained quiet. ‘For the family’, Applejack imagined. They didn’t want to break the family apart, to cause trouble, to rock the boat. They just pitied Applejack as a sort of ‘casualty’. Applejack hated them, too; cowards that thought feeling sorry about someone made not doing anything about it better.
In the Apple Clan, it was a generally held belief that the eldest of the family knew best; they were the common factor amongst all the branches, the one that brought them together, organised the reunions, gave birth to half of them, and who directed the clan as a whole. Granny was that mare, and whilst Applejack had often thought the role was overblown, it appeared that not all, or even most, of the others held her more flexible views.
It was only a matter of time until Applejack was forced out for good, and with her the state of affairs only got worse; there was no way the farm was making much in the way of profits now, and the best thing Applejack wanted for her sister was to get her enough money so she could study somewhere far, far away from Ponyville. Manehattan, maybe. Tartarus, even Cloudsdale would be better than here. In the meantime, Big Mac would just have to take care of the girl. Applejack was barely even able to see her; the only times she tried, she would get hounded by some of the Baltimare Apples, usually to have taunts and abuse hurled at her for ‘betraying’ the family… as if she had been the one to decide to leave. One time, Applejack had snapped and cracked her leg across one of their heads. That had been the dumb lug that had gotten rag-dolled into Berry’s stall, crushing the whole thing. Peel, his name had been. The stallion had to eat from a straw for two months afterwards.
As satisfying as it had been in the short term, it was more trouble than Applebloom could afford. Applejack was terrified that they’d take it out on her little sister, and so after that she had kept her distance, only feeling worse for it.
Applejack sighed, and rested her head on the table. Reminiscing didn’t help; if anything it just made the niggling, itching irritation at the back of her skull worse.
Everything she had done for the old hag… She had even been prepared to go to the Gala just to sell enough apple products to get her a replacement hip. Let her deal with Filthy Rich because ‘that was the way they had always done it’. Applejack hadn’t even said anything when Big Mac went nearly mute after being quite the little chatterbox.
Applejack breathed in. Yesterday was over. Today, she had to get ready for her day… or rather, night job.
Applejack ran in a gently curving arc around the town… past the wheat fields to the south, and up towards the old cottage. Fluttershy lived there, Applejack thought, though she had never really thought to check. Nopony really interacted with that mare outside of needing help with some animal or other.
Behind Applejack, the sound of four paws in the snow rustled. Winona trailed Applejack happily, panting heavily in big bursts of steam. Winona had been the only thing Applejack took with her after leaving the farm… Granny could ruin the farm, turn her clan against her, cow Big Mac into submission, but at the end of the day, Winona was her fucking dog.
The long jog was just to get her muscles warmed up and relaxed after yesterday. The cold made it sting uncomfortably, but not unbearably. Applejack had an innate resilience few ponies had.
Above her, in the sky, Applejack saw a flash of colour. Probably that Rainbow. Applejack remembered hanging out with her every now and then before the Nightmare came; perhaps they’d still be in touch if Applejack had been at the Town Hall that day. Instead, Rainbow Dash had a new gang of friends. The pegasus girl had tried to stay in touch, admittedly… but there was too much going on in Applejack’s life to keep up something as trivial as a friendship. Shame. Applejack could do with a running partner besides Winona. It didn’t do to run a dog too much.
Applejack came to a slow stop near the cottage, and ran her hand through her hair, cut short to avoid getting in the way. Winona pit-pattered beside her, and Applejack smiled wanly, leant down and gave the girl a pet on the head.
“Who’s a good girl, hmm?” she asked. Rhetorically, of course. Winona was the goodest girl.
Winona did not reply, on account of being a dog.
“Bit slow today, huh?”
Applejack glanced upwards. Rainbow was pushing a cloud into place, her long wings fluttering gently to maintain altitude without speeding up too much. Oftentimes, Applejack had seen Rainbow flash across the sky in a blur, but when it came to placing clouds, rather than busting them, Applejack supposed it was a more delicate and ponderous procedure.
“It’s called joggin’,'' Applejack said. “Ain’t supposed to be fast.”
Rainbow chuckled. The pegasus girl looked like she hadn’t much of a care in the world. Applejack wondered what kind of life she was living right now… probably not one disgraced, alone, and angry as a manticore.
“You look, uh, bigger than when we last talked,” Rainbow said, gesturing in the general direction of Applejack’s arms and chest, which had over the past year swollen with muscle and sinew.
“Don’t go mentionin’ a girl’s weight like that. Ain’t polite.”
“No, you look good. Just huge is all. What’s your workout?”
Applejack sighed. She had a vague recollection of Rainbow’s lack of tact, but there was nothing like an in-person reminder. “Boxing, lifting, boxing, joggin’, boxing again…”
“Oh right, you do that now! I had a try at it when I was, like, twelve, but I don't think it was for me. I’m a bit too, uh, well, not the right shape for it.” Rainbow gestured at herself. She was right; Rainbow had a uniquely slender and svelte build, designed for aerodynamics and rapid acceleration, but certainly not bulk. Plus, she had that pegasus thing where the muscles were denser but the bones were lighter… Pegasi were notoriously fracture prone.
“Petite,” Applejack said conversationally.
“Not sure I like being called petite,” Rainbow pouted. “Sounds like something Rarity would call me. In fact, I think she has.”
“Pocket-pony sized?”
“Even less, somehow.”
“Micro-mare.”
“Now you’re doing it on purpose.”
Applejack smiled wanly. She could tell Rainbow didn’t really mind the light ribbing… or at least, Applejack didn’t think she did. She recalled that Rainbow was typically fairly thick-skinned, at least as far as her appearance was concerned. Then again, Rainbow was rather famously, if unconventionally, attractive in town, considering her athletic appearance and well-groomed wings. Made sense she wouldn’t be too sensitive about it; why be insecure about something that only served to benefit her?
“Anyway, yeah. Boxin’,” Applejack said. “Got to make a livin’ somehow, and you know, I ain’t lost yet. You?”
“Uh, still flying! Looking to get on the Wonderbolts reserve team. Got to speak with them at the junior flyer’s contest recently, which was awesome.”
Applejack smiled. “That is cool.”
Rainbow hesitated for a moment, as if recalling something she was supposed to do. Eventually, she scratched the back of her neck, and sat cross-legged on the cloud she had been moving.
“You, uh… doing okay?”
Applejack tilted her head. “Hmm?”
“I mean, everyone knows about you and, uh, your family. Just… wanted to check you’re okay. Me and Twilight, we don’t think it’s right.” Rainbow tilted her head. “You remember Twilight, right? You girls spoke once when she was organising the Summer Sun thing. Before the Long Night…”
“I remember who she is,” Applejack said. As if anypony in town could forget the mare that, using the Elements of Magic, Loyalty, Generosity, Laughter, and Kindness, defeated Nightmare Moon and returned Princess Luna to Equestria. She sighed. “Ain’t right. Just is,” Applejack said, her voice lower; some of that anger coming back, as well as the ugly shame and loathing at being an object of pity. She wrestled with it like it was an alligator or bear… she couldn’t lose control in front of Rainbow. Anypony but her. She breathed in. “Didn’t ask for it, but this is what happens when folks listen to everything someone says without thinkin’. Other folks get hurt.”
Rainbow clicked her tongue, seemingly at a loss for words. “Um. Well, uh, if you need a hand, let me know, yeah? Us sporty types gotta stick together, right?”
The anger began to die down, and instead of being the throbbing pulse that threatened an outburst at any provocation, returned to the dull hum in the background. Noise. Just… noise. Something to have taken out of her later, in the ring.
“Ha. Guess we oughta.” Applejack glanced down at Winona, who was looking up at Applejack expectantly, head tilted. “Think the old girl has had a bit of a rest and wants to keep goin’. I’ll see you around, yeah?”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah. I should also get back to it. The other girls got to go and visit Zecora without me because of this stupid winter re-organisation.” The girl pouted. “Would rather be at home napping.”
“Me too, honestly. It’s cold out here,” Applejack replied, and began to jog again. “Then again, it’s cold indoors too. Be seein’ ya.”
Applejack genuinely hoped she would. Beyond her half-hearted chatter with Berry, Rainbow had been the nicest conversation she had had in ages, despite the insecurity Applejack felt. It was, for once, something that she could work through, instead of get consumed by. Or at least, bottle it up a while longer.
These days, Applejack felt like a pot on a stove, always at risk of boiling over. She felt filthy, allowing the rage to peek through the cracks in front of another pony. An ugly scar that was given to her by a family she loathed and loathed to show.
At least, she thought, the roiling turmoil in her would be a good fuel for what would come later.
Ringfighting was still a thing in Equestria, even though it had been many hundreds of years since ponies had had to fight properly. Cutie-marks were cutie-marks, after all, and if you had a talent for violence, well, that was pretty much that. Besides, it was all in good fun.
For the spectators.
Applejack swung her left arm around in a clumsy arc, her battered fist dying to make contact with anything other than air. The crowd were making noise… not quite a cheer, but not a jeer either. Just noise, irritating and loud. She lapped it up; when she was fighting, she felt like less of a person, and more of an object. Meat to be hit and punched and kicked and jeered at. Applejack liked that.
Objects didn’t get hurt or feel abandoned and alone. It was for Applejack a fleeting fantasy roleplay where she got to be little more than a ball of angry, dirty pain. Meat didn’t feel shame, or loneliness, or hate.
Applejack’s bare foot thumped against the floor, her heel bouncing off the ground and shifting her weight to the balls of her feet. The strain in her toes kept her stable, but not for long; she had to keep moving, keep shifting.
The anger flared in her mind. The big stallion in front of her blocked easily, not even deigning to deflect. The blow was just that clumsy.
Gender-separation in sports wasn’t really a thing in Equestria, since cutie-marks didn’t really give a shit about gender, sex, size or origin. You either had talent or you didn’t, and the magic in a cutie-mark would make matters like size, shape, genitals, accent, or whatever redundant, or work it into whatever weird magical skillset a pony had.
As the stallion readied to counterattack, Applejack winced; not only because what was going to come next was on her for making the mistake, but also because she knew that if she had just dipped into her savagery she could have avoided it.
Her thighs burned, perpetually flexed. Nopony who didn’t fight realised how tiring sustaining a stance and a guard was; it was exhausting. You’d run out of energy in minutes, become exhausted not long after. The unleashed fury might have dragged it out longer, but not effectively. Not well.
But she hated harnessing that rage. It felt like using something Granny had given her, and she hated everything about Granny, now. In many ways, she’d rather get hit, rather get punished for feeling the anger. A not-insignificant part of her enjoyed getting pummelled, getting pounded into a pulp by somepony bigger than her. It clashed with the hateful side of her, two gears of her mind spinning in opposite directions.
Her hate was a fuel as much as it was something she desperately wanted beaten out of her.
All Applejack had wanted was to run the farm properly. Granny kept to tradition… old traditions, stupid traditions, nonsensical traditions. She began inventing new traditions, dumb rituals, and counterproductive ideas. All Applejack had tried to do was run the fucking farm.
The stallion’s fist connected with Applejack’s cheek, and it felt good. She felt the inside of her mouth get pinched between overwhelming force and the hardness of her teeth, and then she felt the roots of her canines bend and buckle, but not quite break. She tasted iron, filling her mouth entirely. The force spread from her cheek to her nose, and beyond. The nose, as it happened, was like a button, and when pressed, you’d cry; salt and water leaking like it was a cracked faucet. That was just how it was. Tears welled up in Applejack’s eyes before she even realised she’d been hit, before she even felt pain. Nothing emotional about it, but damn if it’d make it hard to see.
Her heart burned trying to hold her fight-or-flight instinct in check, along with the satisfaction of the pain. Applejack was in her perfect place, this horrid crossroads between wrath and flagellation.
She felt another hit on her ribs, and the fluid that welled up in her mouth was expelled in a messy eruption of blood and spit. Air evacuated her, and she struggled to breath, nearly asphyxiating her.
A corner of her mind, still lucid, flickered to life. Fight back, it said. You need the money.
Applejack hopped back, her feet thump-thumping on the ground to get away, giving her body a split-second to recuperate. She needed air, she needed space, she needed to clear her eyes for a second. She needed to not feel so addicted to the hurt. She needed to not give in to the temptation to just get pounded into nothingness, along with all her shit and baggage.
“Fuck,” she muttered, rare lucidity gradually creeping back to her. As much as she wanted to keep on getting hit over and over, she wouldn’t last. She needed to finish it quick, and that meant touching the rage, undoing the lock, turning up the heat beneath the boiling pot.
The stallion started swinging; just enough to batter Applejack’s arms and maybe force an opening, not enough to actually be considered tiring. Light jabs, mostly. Well, light for this guy. Stallion was huge; had a cutie-mark of a pair of brass knuckles. Wasn’t rocket science what he was good at, what he enjoyed. His cutie-mark made good use of his size, too. Felt like getting hit by a sack of rocks, except better.
Applejack blinked, getting rid of some of the tears, just enough to see an outline of her opponent. Just enough to aim…
A synapse flared to life… some of that anger welling in her mind began to be tapped.
Skill and dedication were some of the most powerful forces in the world; they could overcome so many obstacles and trounce so many challenges. She could tell that the stallion practised daily, that he lived for this. He was disciplined, well-trained, dedicated.
But there was another power out there that turned practice into pain; dedication into despair. It was how bullies and brutes bent and broke better people than them.
Malice and spite; the sheer desire and need to cause hurt.
Applejack glared at the stallion, bitter and twisted. Sure, the tree that had dropped her had been rotten and diseased, but Applejack couldn’t help but feel that same gross ugliness spread to herself as well. The apple was as rotten as the tree.
She ducked low; a suicidal technique if anyone had expected it; a raised knee would have ended her then and there. With her right fist, she tapped the stallion low in the side, beneath the ribs. Not a knock-out blow. Not even close.
Or at least, it wouldn’t have been if it had been delivered by anypony but Applejack.
The stallion’s head buckled and twisted under some unseen force; a translation of mechanical pressure that didn’t, on the surface, make sense. Alas for him, that was a consequence of Applejack’s talent. She could kick a tree and make the apples fall from the uppermost branches. So too could she punch a man in the gut and rattle the very brains in his head with the same precision as it took to knock a single apple off a tree’s branch and into a basket below.
Just because it was precise, however, didn’t mean it wasn’t ruthless, cruel, mean-spirited and aggressive. The force that hit the stallion’s head like a hammer on an anvil also travelled through kidneys, pelvis, the spine from the sacral vertebrae all the way up to the cervical, passing through the jawbone, teeth, and finally the skull itself. The shock took a second to register in the brain, but when it did, the stallion was out cold before even a single neuron could fire.
Applejack held her fist back, twitching, itching to hit again, but with every ounce of self-control she still possessed, remained utterly still. The bigger body, the stronger body, crumpled to the ground in a twisted heap. That was the thing with cutie-marks and special talents. Sometimes, you came across one that straight up wasn’t fair. No amount of training could have saved the poor guy from Applejack, not today. Not anymore.
Applejack counted her bits in the cold, under the stars. Her coat was tattered and worn, and the little holes let in the cold wind enough to prickle her skin. Two-hundred, she counted. That was easy. One-hundred for Applebloom, one-hundred for food. And maybe a new coat.
She breathed out. She felt good for having let some of that acid vitriol she had been bottling out, but also dirty. It wasn’t really her own anger. It couldn’t be. She much preferred getting hit and tiring them out until she could win cleanly. Instead, holding two-hundred bits after wallowing in wrath, she felt unpleasant and wrong.
She groaned and got up. Time to head… well, not home. Not really. But back to bed, for sure.
Applejack would likely never go home again; not the home she grew up in, at least.
Applejack couldn’t keep doing this.
Waking up in the cold was as much an ordeal as it was the day before, if not more. This time, Applejack could still taste the tang of blood in her mouth, as well as the ache of simply trying to yawn. Her sides burned from the exertion of the night before, and breathing stung due to her bruised ribs. Every twitch of her legs felt like a mistake. Patches of her fur itched from rubbing against another angry living creature violently.
And still, her shoulders were cold from slipping out from under the blanket, and she still hadn’t worn anything more than a pair of boxers. Applejack winced at how she stoically refused to learn.
She rolled onto her side, exposing the bruises on her sides to the icy air. One of the advantages of having even short hairs across her entire body was that the dark purples of bruises were invisible, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. She pushed off the mattress with her arms and struggled to her feet. Her morning routine was far less mechanical than yesterday.
She went towards the bag of shopping she had bought the day before, and opened it. She pulled out a jar of orange marmalade. She sighed. She didn’t like oranges, but the apple jam she was used to tasted even worse now.
Unlike the day before, she didn’t bother to dress herself, and instead basked in the cold. The soreness from the fight dulled the sting of the chill to the point where they sort of cancelled each other out. She glanced down at her battered body as she spread marmelade on her toast. Rainbow was right; she had changed in a short period of time. Her arms were bigger, there was less flab and bounce to her chest, and even beneath the coat she could see the outlines of a chiselled eight-pack, rather than her previous six. And she was bigger; yes, she was bigger, heavier, and weightier. She had been somewhat self-conscious about the size of her hips and thighs before leaving the farm due to the tree-kicking. Part of her wondered if mares and stallions liked that kind of awkward bulk. Rainbow Dash hadn't seemed to mind, but then again she might have just been being polite.
Then again, Applejack rather liked it. There was something slightly monstrous about her appearance now, and she liked the threat her newfound size exuded. She was tired of being messed with, and tired of the Baltimare Apples and Granny ruining her life without even being in the room. She would like for them to be scared of what she could do, even if that kind of thinking amounted to little more than a masturbatory power-fantasy. Every now and then she pictured herself letting loose on them, making them as afraid and small as she felt daily.
It was a nice dream, but it wasn't the sort of thing she could actually do.
She stood up, and went to feed Winona. The dog hungrily ate the kibble and water Applejack put out for her, along with the scraps of toast. Bread wasn’t good for a dog, Applejack thought, but then again the garbage they put in dogfood couldn’t make it that much worse.
Applejack went to the window. Perhaps, she thought, it was time to think seriously about the future. If there was one thing the beating she had taken the night before had done, it was put things into perspective. Applejack didn’t deny the exhilaration she had felt as the other boxer had repeatedly brutalised her, and the filthy, ugly satisfaction she had taken in returning it to him ten-fold, but she couldn’t keep it up. Her body would break before she’d break even; the amount she was making wouldn’t cut it if she kept giving half to Applebloom. The dull agony she was in now was evidence of how fragile she still was, despite her unnatural resilience.
She rubbed her head, still sore from that one thump she had taken on the cheek, and began to think.
Though many ponies, Applejack knew, saw her as not much more than a disposable brute with something of a green thumb, Applejack had other gifts besides the physical; she knew things. For instance, she knew that Canterlot got the majority of its apple produce from the Sweet Apple Acres due to proximity, convenience, and above-all, quality. She also knew that quality and quantity had both dropped. She knew that the chefs of Canterlot would be looking elsewhere for their supply. She knew that Filthy Rich hated dealing with the Baltimare Apples… who didn’t? They were thugs, bullies, and fanatically obsessed with ‘the family’. Closer to a mafia than farmers, in Applejack’s opinion. She knew him and others would be happy to do business with Applejack again, whatever the context. She knew that many in Ponyville still remembered her as a friendly, responsible mare who always helped out when she could.
Then again, Applejack felt terrified at the thought of acting on that knowledge, actually taking a step and starting a new farm, a new business somewhere else. It was one thing to wallow in hate and self-deprecation, spitting in the eye of a world that disgraced her, but it was another to take a meaningful stab at a life that had gotten ruined before. What if she missed? Started a business, tried to start everything up from scratch again, fail miserably? At least now she could blame Granny and her idiotic practices for everything that had gone wrong in her life, curse her irrational paranoia and dark madness. If Applejack failed again, the common denominator wouldn't be Granny, but her, and Applejack wasn’t sure she could face being a failure without the luxury of blaming her insane, decrepit granny.
Then again, wasn’t it just plain pathetic to exist like this, wallowing in loathing and pain? And it wouldn’t last, either way. The burning sensation in all her joints, the sting of the cold on her raw knuckles and her swollen face were all evidence that what she was doing, this toxic concoction of violent outburst and wilful self-harm would eventually end up resulting in an injury that wouldn't heal.
Look what life had turned her into, Applejack thought as she scanned her reflection in the window.
Applejack breathed in, a small spark igniting in her. Not a kind spark of innocence and naivete, but a hard spark, glowing with spite and eager to set something alight.
Maybe it wouldn’t be about trying to ‘make a new life’. Maybe Applejack’s thinking had just been permanently broken, and she needed to readjust her approach. Perhaps it was going to be about settling a score. About revenge.
Pit Granny’s old traditionalist stupidity crushed beneath Applejack’s pragmatic sense and innovation. See how well Granny’s inane jam-making techniques stood up to just putting the zap-apple jam in a jar and adding the proper ingredients. Applejack chuckled. She had never told granny that the reason the zap-apple jam tasted so good was because she had secretly been adding a mixture of cinnamon and ginger, as well as some lemon juice. Not how Granny insisted on leaping over the jars like a rabbit… back when she still had the hips to do so, that is.
Yes… maybe that would be better. Applejack couldn’t face the fear of failing to start a new life, but failure to enact revenge wasn’t the same. If she failed at revenge, well, that would be good, in a way. Just another act of self-flagellation, another drop of emotional blood to the puddle. No muss, no fuss.
Applejack glanced at the bits she had saved up for Applebloom, and then again at the packet of seeds she had rescued from the Acres. She glowered. If she was going to do this, she needed all the money she could get.
“Wait a lil’ while, Applebloom,” Applejack muttered darkly. “Your big sis’ is going to pick a fight with the Acres.”
Author's Note
Hi there. Happy December.
Bit of an experiment from me today; much like Rescuer, I'm kind of leaving this one open-ended and if there's enough interest in it, I may revisit this weird alternate universe where AJ never became an element and has an all-around miserable time. With that in mind, I've rated this story as Mature to give me additional freedom to visit more explicit themes and content in the eventuality I do want to expand on the story. If you enjoyed it, let me know!
Can't expect Christmas to be all cheer and delight, right?
Have a good one,
Hap
