What Happened To Yesterday

“Oh fair Rarity..fairity. Haha. It’s a joke.” Berry’s Shakespearean accent devolved once he made the joke into his usual manner of speech. “Anywho, we’re here~!” Berry was looking into the boutique, waiting for the mare to poke her head out from somewhere. Instead he was tackled from the side by yellow, orange, and white blurs.

“Berry!” All three of the Cutie Mark Crusaders shouted at once, nearly deafening the poor stallion they had on the ground.

“Helloooooo CMC!” Berry yelled back at the same volume. “Here for dinner?” One by one the group of fillies piled off of Berry to allow him to get up.

“Nah, we’re here for a sleepover.” Scootaloo said excitedly as her little wings buzzed. “Rarity said we could because Sweetie didn’t come Crusading today.”

“Say, what’re you doin’ here big brother?” The little filly with the red mane asked inquisitively. “I told Big Mac I was comin’ over here.”

“He’s Berry’s coltfriend, Applebloom.” Sweetie Belle squeaked. “They’re in looove~” Scootaloo made a scandalous ‘oooh’ to add to Sweetie’s statement.  Applebloom however simply stared at her brother.

“Nu-Uh. Applejack would never date a stallion.” Applebloom waved off Sweetie’s ridiculous claim. “I’ve seen the dirty magazines in his room. All mares.” Applejack was in shock, mainly from discovering the fact that his little sister has gone extensively through his room. “Uh…I mean…I just know these things…?” Applebloom laughed nervously at her own folly.

“Right!” Berry exclaimed, hoping to change the direction of the conversation. “Come on, girls. Go wash up for dinner, no time to waste!” With what little tail he had left, Berry ushered the girls to the washroom to clean up with them.

“Hmm. So how much truth was in what you told Rainbow Dash?” Applejack jumped and turned to face Rarity, who was standing in the doorway to the dining area. “Because from where I am standing, it seems it’s more truth than cover-up at this point, no?”

“Those magazines are Big Mac’s, Rarity.” Applejack lowered his head and barely spoke audibly.

“Mhm. Well listen here. One of these days you’re going to have to choose which lie you want to live, and who you want to get hurt. I only hope the words of our ancestors ring true; Love Conquers All.” With that ominous statement, Rarity left to the kitchen, leaving Applejack to ponder his life.

--

“Mmm! Smells delicious, Rarity!” Berry proclaimed as he leaned over the mare’s shoulder so he could get a whiff of what was in the oven. “Need any help?”

“No need, Berry. It’s almost done.” She turned to face the stallion, who was looking through her spice rack now. “But do you need any help?” She asked curiously. She felt like he should be upset about what his coltfriend was hiding.

“With what?” He turned to face his friend to see her nodding to the kitchen table where Applejack was putting his over-sized hat on his little sister’s head. “With Applejack? Nah, we’re all good now, remember?”

“And the supposed…magazines he was harboring?” She cocked her eyesbrow and leaned against the counter.

“Those? Probably just Big Mac’s or something. It’s cool, I have dirty magazines under my mattress too.” Berry smiled, when he saw Sweetie Belle giving him a funny face, he returned it with his tongue touching the tip of his nose, which elicited a giggle from the filly.

“But not ones with mares in them, I would hope.” Rarity was suppressing her disgust of stallions and their…periodicals. It was positively…gross.

“Well I have one or two.” Rarity gave him a look. “What? I was curious about what the big deal was.” Before Rarity could rebuttal the oven timer went off and she had to turn her attention to the task at hoof.

Berry hopped off to the table to let Rarity work on dinner. When he sat in his seat, the small group was talking about cutie marks.

“-So we didn’t get to buck any apples, cuz Carrot Top needed our help with the rabbits trying to eat her carrots.” Applebloom let loose a heavy sigh, at which Scootaloo picked up the story.

“We didn’t get our cutie marks in garden protecting, either.” Both of the little ponies let loose a heavy sigh, their efforts foiled. “You guys are lucky, you got your cutie marks from a sonic rainboom.” Applebloom nodded in agreement, Sweetie Belle was too busy having a funny-face-off with Berry to take part in the conversation.

“Berry, quit that. Your face will get stuck like that.” Applejack scolded his coltfriend, who was in the middle of pulling a funny face. He stopped, as did his compatriot. “And Scoots, it just takes time. I keep tellin’ y’all that. I swear it’s like talkin’ to a brick wall.”

“Hey AJ, leave ‘em alone. I think they’re doing it right. After all, they’re trying everything! What’s more fun than that? If I didn’t grow up on a rock farm, I would totally be a cutie mark crusader!” Berry smiled at the three, who basked in the element of laughter’s praise. “I think you’re just being too hard on them, Jackie.”

“Jackie…?” Applebloom asked curiously. “I thought you said only mom and dad called you that.” Applebloom had been told every detail about her parent’s lives by her siblings and Granny. Seeing as how she was barely a year when they perished, AJ and Big Mac saw it important to keep their memory alive within her.

“I told you Applebloom, they’re in love! Berry can call him whatever he wants.” Sweetie Belle persisted with the truth, even though she doubted her thick-skulled friend would listen.

“Nu-uh. Berry’s in love with Rainbow Dash, you’ve seen ‘em together!” That got a look from everypony in the room, especially Berry and Applejack. “She even calls ‘im pet names like Bubble Butt and Bubblegum. They’re practically married!” One by one, everypony except Berry shook their heads in disbelief.

“Umm, Applebloom. You know I’m gay, right?” Berry asked curiously.

“What does religion have to do with this?” Asked the little earth pony. “Why can’t you just stay on topic?”

“Uh, AB? Gay’s not a religion. It means he likes boys.” Scootaloo interjected. “Y’know, like kissing ‘em and junk.” Applebloom looked at the pegasus in disbelief, then audibly scoffed.

“Pfft, Scoots you’re always making stuff up.” The yellow filly waved her friend away with a hoof. “What a kidder, right?” Not even the crickets answered her. “Right?”

“Well she’s right, Applebloom. I like stallions like most stallions like mares.” Berry spoke slowly, calmly. “And she’s right, your brother and I are in love, right Applejack?” The farm stallion was sweating bullets…wait. I need a proper metaphor, Equestria doesn’t have bullets…umm…spears! He was sweating spears. Knew I would get it.

“Well would you look at that!” Rarity set a tray of quinoa and fresh baked rolls on the table. It wasn’t a hard meal to make, but quinoa was pretty pricey and fresh baked rolls weren’t a household occurrence.  “Food’s here! I’ll say grace!”

“Grace!” Yelled Berry loudly. He snorted out a giggle that radiated to just about everpony except Rarity, who sat demurely at the head of the table. “Dig in everypony!” What happened next could only be described as a massacre of innocent foodstuffs. The rolls and quinoa were passed around chaotically to whoever needed them, and as soon as the guests got a taste of the delectable treat they were consuming, they began devouring it…politely. If one can do such a thing.

In a little under fifteen minutes, it was all gone. Three grown ponies, two of which are earth stallions, and three fillies can consume a lot of food when there’s enough and it’s delicious enough.

“Urgh…” Applejack groaned. “Thanks for the meal, Rarity…I appreciate it…” He managed to get out after a sufficient struggle.

“You gotta give me the recipe, Rarity! That quinoa was awesome! What’d you put in it?” Berry was fine. His bottomless pit of a stomach ingested all of the food just fine. In fact, he was still hungry.

“Oh, it was just a recipe my parents brought back from their third honeymoon to Marexico. A delightful country, I am told. Wonderful cuisine.” Everypony in attendance heartily agreed to that statement after the meal they just had.

“I ain’t one to compliment other countries, but them Marexicans know their way around food.” Applejack took off his hat to wipe the sweat from his brow. “I don’t know if I can make it back home tonight.”

“I know! You and Berry can stay here with us! We were going to build a fort in the main room to sleep in, you can sleep in it with us!” Sweetie chirped out, Rarity was busy cleaning off the table so Applejack fielded this one.

“Well I guess we can stay the night…but Berry, Applebloom and I need to get up early to go to work.” He noticed a slight decrease in Berry’s smile, that was equivalent to a normal pony’s frown.

“Well there goes what I was hoping to do tonight…” The flamboyant stallion said under his breath. It wasn’t that he was a sex addict or anything like that…he just found that when he liked something he needed it every day or else it put a slight dent in his mood.

“And I know Berry’s a good blanket fort builder, I remember buildin’ one with him and Dash when we were younger. It turned into the clubhouse, no joke.” Okay, so maybe he was exaggerating a little, Berry’s fort was just the inspiration for the clubhouse. However, all of the CMC  believed him and looked at the pink stallion with wonder.

“Well, let’s get started girls.”

--

“At least their surrounded by little fillies…they won’t do anything around fillies will they?” Twilight ‘Stalker Extraordinaire’ Sparkle sat outside of one of Carousel Boutique’s many windows, a bush concealing her location. She was just keeping tabs on her two targets, yeah. Call it research.

“Some ponies are quiet, might still do the horizontal monster mash if they’re left alone.” Twilacorn, that’s what Twilight named her little delusion friend, was hovering in front of the window.

“Applejack would never. He’s a gentlecolt.” Twilight vehemently defended her crush from her own psychosis. “Plus, his little sister is in there…”

“Some ponies are freaky like that, Sparkles.” That was Twilacorn’s nickname for her originator. Twilight wasn’t sure if it was meant to be an insult or not, but she took it as a compliment. “Speaking of freaky; why are we stalking them? We haven’t even formed a plan. I think this is jumping the gun just a bit.”

“What’s a gun?” The little delusion often used strange phrases that Twilight had never heard before. “Not important.” The mare shook her head, making the distracting thought go away. “What is important is that we do have a plan which I just came up with.”

“Like Java, an update is required.” There was another strange turn of phrase.

“Right…what I mean is have you ever heard of magical truth or dare?” As soon as Twilight said it, the little Twilacorn’s grin turned almost evil.

“Oh you are good, Sparkles.”

--

“See? That’s a fort.” Berry stood back to admire his masterpiece. Almost every spare sheet was used in the creation of the fort, it stretched from one end of the main  room of Carousel Boutique almost to the halfway point of it. Chairs and mannequins made the various cornerstones and the inside was even divided into three different rooms. The main room, and two separate ‘bedrooms.’ It was his best work to date.

“Knew you were amazing, Berry.” Applejack stated as he walked into the tent. Yeah, it was so big he can walk into it without slouching. “But dang, you really outdid yourself.”

“Hey! We helped!” The little pegasus cried indignantly. Indeed the Cutie Mark Crusaders had helped, heck they had done most of the work. Berry thought it good experience if he was just the forepony and he let the fillies actually build it.

“Alright, alright.” Applejack conceded. “Y’all did a good job. Better?” The three fillies all nodded in approval. “I’m going to take a wild guess, one room for Berry, one room for me, and the big one for y’all?”

“No.” Answered Sweetie Belle. “One room for us, one room for you an Berry, and the foyer.” Her attempt at sounding classy failed when she pronounced  foyer as it was spelled.

“Woohoo! I gets to cuddle with my Jackie!” Berry popped inside of the fort and landed on Applejack’s back. The sentence and the act itself elicited a strange look from Applebloom. The little filly still wasn’t sure what to make sure of this…relationship her brother supposedly had with Berry.

“Yuck. Boy cuddling.” Scootaloo made a gagging motion, that Berry laughed at.

“I think it’s cute.” Sweetie Belle protested.

“You think everything’s cute, so that doesn’t count.” it was obvious that if this train wasn’t stopped, Sweetie and Scoots would just keep going. So Berry jumped off of his coltfriend’s back and popped in between the two of them.

“How about we hit the hay, huh?” Inwardly, Berry cheered at his own alliteration. Outwardly he only smiled bigger. “We all need to get up super early in the morning, and Berry needs his sleep.” At the mention of sleep, Applejack yawned.

“But we’re not tired.” Applebloom stepped up to Berry, a defiant look in her eyes.

“Well that’s okay.” Berry met her fire with his glee. “You can stay up and talk, AJ and I will go to bed.” Applejack was already walking into their ‘room’, so Berry turned tail and followed.

As soon as the couple left the main room, Applebloom turned to her compatriots and whispered. “Are they really….y’know?” Both Sweetie and Scootaloo let loose a loud sigh.

“Coltfriends?” Scootaloo said rather bluntly. “C’mon Applebloom, who cares? Let ponies love who they want. Love is love.” The complexity of the statement sailed straight over her friends’ collective heads

“They’re happy, Applebloom.” Sweetie Belle was up to bat now. “And how can you be against happiness?” Applebloom looked as if she was going to open her mouth to retort, but gave up. “So wanna plan our crusade for tomorrow?”

--

“I love those little fillies…” Berry sighed in pure contentment. He had often discussed foals with Rarity, just because he liked the idea. He had easily settled on adoption once he settled down with whoever he married. It’s better to help a foal who needs it than bring another one into this world, after all. He had even decided he wanted one little pegasus and one earth pony. He had considered adopting a unicorn, but he had seen the destruction unicorn foals could cause, so that was a big no.

“Little troublemakers is what they are.” Applejack took off his hat, put it on a mannequin that was holding the structure up, then fell to the ground. “See, that’s what happens when you’re real parents ain’t around much. You get fillies with a penchant for chaos.” Applejack rolled onto his side, his hoof tapping the ground next to him.

Well that killed Berry’s mood. He wasn’t sure what Applejack meant by ‘real parents’ but the way he said it didn’t bode all too well for Berry’s dreams. They would talk about it later, he silently decided. For now they needed sleep.

Berry laid down next to his love, Applejack’s foreleg draping around him to pull him closer. When the warmth of AJ’s love hit him, like it always did, it calmed Berry down. The pink stallion closed his eyes and drifted off to dreamland.

Dreams are a funny thing. Most say they are what our subconscious is really thinking, what it really wants. But for Berry, dreams were just another way to catch up with old friends.

A moonlit field, the stars twinkling above was the meeting place every night.  There was a single tree, scarred by years of lightning hitting it, that served as the beacon to his friend. Of course, he appeared right beneath it every night, she had to come to him.

As if on cue, she did. Well…he did. In his dreams everypony was a stallion, but he knew that it was really a mare.

“Good evening, Berry.” The regal voice called out. The visage was familiar at this point, if not still a little odd. A pony taller than others, his dark blue wings spread proudly, his mane shining with all of the glory of the night sky, and his royal adornments sparkling in the night.

“Hi Princess Luna.” Yeah, if that description didn’t give away who it was, it’s the Princess-well Prince here-of the night. Shortly after the little Nightmare Night incident, Berry had been meeting with her every night in his dreams. Why? Well the Princess had decided she needed to learn how to be more contemporary and nicer. Who better to teach her this than a gay stallion who was always happy?

“What is wrong, Berry? You do not seem as jovial as per the usual.” Her speech has improved greatly, but she still spoke in longer sentences than a normal pony would. He guessed it was just a Princess thing.

“You know Applejack, right?” The gender warped version of Luna nodded. “I’m just starting to doubt all of this…” It was great to be in the dreamscape. It was the one place he didn’t have to keep up his smile, mainly because it was his subconscious taking over.

“Well I do not pretend to understand mortal love. My only love is the moon and the stars, their love is eternal.” As if on cue, the stars and moon seemed to shine even brighter, bathing the Princess of the night in their light.

“And the whole ‘anypony you love will inevitably die’ thing.” Berry added on, making Luna’s mood visibly drop.

“Yes, and that.” She/he sighed. “But we understand your plight. The moon and stars were under our sister’s control for one thousand years. I believe you mortals call that ‘sloppy seconds.’ It was as if they were cheating on us.”

“Yeah, but it’s like Applejack is cheating with another life. Part of him wants to be with me and part of him wants to be what his parents raised him to be…” A terrible wind started to blow across the field, Luna saw it as a stressful mind taking action on a peaceful state.

“He will decide his life soon, Berry. Forces are working against you though, terrible forces. I can feel the darkness edging in on Equestria even now…Tia and I both can. It’s only a question of what it is and when it will strike. We fear that the elements of harmony are the targets…” Berry had learned to trust the Princess over time, she seemed to be a bit of an oracle at foreseeing danger. “But we need you and your friends to stay vigilant.” A silver clad hoof touched Berry’s shoulder. “And calm.”