The Broken House

It was a long trek from the station. As much as Lancer wanted to simply fly there, he had too much luggage to make flying any more effective than walking. So, onwards he trudged, for about a full hour. Behind him, the sleepy rural town grew smaller, and all around him the endless fields and orchards of farmlands encompassed his sight. An empty field, freshly harvested, expanded off to his left, an apple orchard, trees barren of leaves, stretched out to his right.

A mare met him at the neighbor house. She hefted one of the bags onto her back, walking alongside him the rest of the way to their destination. His aching legs from the road march, carrying bags that would probably amount to his usual expedition kit, made him regret trying to take all of his luggage over from the boarding house at once. But... it would all be worth it. Worth it to put his luggage down one final time and drink it all in.

A house towered over the nearby hills. They had kept on the original paint job. Cream white with pink feature stripes, renewed by themselves as soon as the workers had finished their work on the roof and the outside. Lancer had been coming along every day he was idle throughout the late summer and early-to-mid autumn with fenceposts from the hardware store. Slowly, he had rooted out the old, rotten picket fence, cut back the grass surrounding it, and re-fenced the yard. He hadn't been alone, though, Carrot Top and Applejack, both very experienced at fence maintenance, had told him what to do, and helped from time to time. Now, a red picket fence surrounded the recently cut, empty lawn. Tall enough to prevent critters from wandering in, but not tall enough to cut off the view of the rolling hills, the orchards, the fields, and the distant forest.

The bricks had been resettled, any foundational issues resolved. The roof was one, solid object, re-shingled as well. The chimney stood tall above the black roofing, ready for the cold of winter when it came, very soon. Windows had been cleaned, and now were visible clean through into the empty rooms of the house. Every lick of peeling paint, every crumbling structure, every crack, had all been repaired. Even the small front porch sported a brand new coat of wood polish, still smelling slightly of the chemical finisher. The only sign of the construction work now was a flattened stretch of grass next to the front gate, where piles and piles of refuse had been extracted from the house and had waited to be hauled to the dump.

Lancer stood in front of the house, before looking down at the mailbox sitting in front of it. Written in rusted letters on the side was '102'.

He was finally home.

The gate pushed open without any complaints as he walked out onto the cobblestone path that he had renewed, leading from the road to the steps of the porch. Walking up the stairs, he slowly ascended towards the front door. One of the steps was extra solid, a recent replacement. He steadily continued upwards.

The front door was unlocked with the twist of a key, and the door opened to the interior. Refinished hardwood floors, new walls. Bare walls, sure, but they were free of mold. He took a deep breath. Sawdust, finisher, fresh paint, and a bit of dust.

He flicked on a lightswitch. All of the ceiling lights came on evenly. He switched them back off again, it was day after all.

Walking up to the kitchen counter. He took a potted plant from his bag, placing it beside his sink. It was still alive, despite what had seemed like Lancer's best efforts to let it die. He poured a glass from the sink and refreshed it, staring at it for a moment longer before turning around towards Cheerilee.

"Wow," she breathed, "...Home sweet home?"

Lancer's eyes watered a bit, before he nodded, "Yeah. Home sweet home."

Some of the furniture from before the construction work was salvageable. Examples were the kitchen countertops, the old dining room table (but not all of the chairs), several wooden chairs from across the house, a dresser, the metal filing cabinets from the basement (although those hadn't been moved from their spot), and a bedframe. He'd bought a mattress shortly after the work had officially finished, so that he'd something to sleep in while working.

Walking up to his room and shedding his bags, he looked down and around at the layers of sawdust and debris dotting the floor, noting with a slight chuckle, "I guess the first step is vacuum cleaning?"

After borrowing a vacuum cleaner from Cheerilee's house (he'd buy his own later), they spent a good hour or so dusting and vacuuming up the construction debris. After filling up around 2 bags of trash, the floor was clean... until they both realized it was probably a good idea to mop as well. After borrowing yet another cleaning implement from the other house after a short five minute fly, Lancer mopped on his own as Cheerilee took out a measuring tape and began precisely measuring certain dimensions of the floorplan, taking notes in a separate ledger.

"What're you doing?" Lancer asked as he waited for the mop bucket to refill with water from the sink.

"Taking measurements," Cheerilee said simply.

"Yeah but uh... why?" he frowned.

"So you know what measurements to look for when you're buying furniture of course," she rolled her eyes as if it was obvious, which in hindsight it was.

With a wet, clean floor, slightly slippery hooves, and two hours of the day gone, Lancer pulled up one of the old wooden chairs next to the kitchen counters and sat down with a glass of tepid tap water. Sighing and leaning back, he took a moment to admire his hoofywork... and to taste the smell of bleach.

"So I need new wallpaper," he commented, "New curtains. And new furniture, of course. Could also go with the times and just paint the walls instead."

"Most houses in Ponyville use wallpaper, so it might just be easier to get it over interior paint," Cheerilee suggested, finally retracting her measuring tape and scraping another chair over beside Lancer.

"Fair, I guess. Then I need a new fridge, washing machine, dryer..."

"New washing line too probably."

"Saves on electricity, yeah."

"And makes things smell fresher cause of the sunlight."

"And actually a lot of the armor material can't be machine washed and dried."

"Oh okay so a normal tub as well then."

"Yeah..." Lancer trailed off, looking over to Cheerilee. They locked eyes for a moment, before she blushed and brushed a strand of her mane back into position nervously. Leaning towards her slightly, Lancer asked, "You said you gardened as a hobby, right?"

"Yeah, just some vegetables and flowers. The Flower Fillies beat me out any day of the week," she tittered softly.

"You know, the yard's pretty big. Probably won't get much hoof traffic to appreciate a big floral garden, and I'm not much for vegetables, buut I can imagine a cool barbeque setup and stuff out back," he suggested, a smile growing on his lips as Cheerilee's mind visibly began to work.

"Oh I could imagine a great firepit there! And you could even get firewood from the Everfree! They encourage you to chop wood from there to try and keep the forest under control, and it's only a small fly away..."

The next week or so was filled with headaches, many more than Lancer thought was possible. He had mostly suppressed the memories of trying to haul a single bedframe up three flights of stairs in his Canterlot apartment, but those memories all came flooding back when he realized that his queen size frame had to somehow fit through his front door and get up the stairs without knocking a hole through his brand new drywall.

They eventually had to settle for disassembling it completely and putting it back together in the room.

The deliverypony, a grey pegasus mare, destroyed his new couch by dropping it from series A airspace, and he had to spend hours on the phone talking to the store to get it replaced for free. The next couch was delivered by the same pony, and if he hadn't launched from the porch as soon as he recognized her to try and help, she would have dropped the replacement as well.

Lancer liked Cheerilee's taste in anything colorful. She was the one mostly responsible for things like the curtains, an item which Lancer hadn't appreciated due to the remoteness of his house already giving him plentiful amounts of privacy. Still, the curtains complemented the wallpaper well - mostly by being orange while the walls were going to be a sky blue. They helped warm up the place, which he was able to appreciate after a day of drilling new curtain rods into the walls.

A week later, his renovation work stopped once again. After retrieving his dress uniform from the town laundromat, he took to Town Hall to officially take on the position of the town guard from the mayor. A rather unglamourous position, with the only thing coming close to an office being a jail cell in the basement and a filing cabinet full of dusty old reports. With that, his paid vacation was officially over, and he had work to do once again. He welcomed the change of pace, and watching varying speeds of nothing occur on patrol wasn't that much different from castle watch duty.

Every time he was off, he continued work on the house. After installing a fridge, dealing with a minor flood from a poorly installed washing machine, looking over the plumber's back as he fixed it as well as figured out why the toilet kept clogging, he finally felt like the house was less of a wood-and-brick shell.

Delving into the basement, which had been mostly untouched during the construction work aside from a new heater being installed, Lancer spent a night silently reading through her old letters again. Quietly, he recycled some of the cardboard boxes the new furniture came in, set the letters neatly inside, and transported them to the attic.

The world grew colder and colder as time went on. Any trees that had not had their leaves shaken off had completely shed, except for the line of green on the horizon that was the Everfree, stubbornly refusing to bend to the ponies' idea of seasons. As both their lives grew busier again, Lancer and Cheerilee more often found themselves communicating over the phone rather than in person. Though, that didn't prevent Lancer from flying over once in a while, whenever she had a spare moment and wasn't working.

In Lancer's back yard, a small pit was sunk with an afternoon's work shovelling. With some help from Carrot Top, concrete was correctly mixed and dumped in, with bricks being mortared and arrayed around to create a firepit. As soon as the wet, spare concrete that Lancer had accidentally faceplanted into was washed off, he spent the last of his savings on lawn and porch furniture.

One afternoon, after screwing the final bolts into the frame of the self-assemble rocking chair he'd bought for the front porch, he sat and watched the sun go down.

Finally, he felt at peace.

To be continued...