My Love, A Ghost
My Love, A Ghost
Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.
Perhaps, one day, remembering even these things will bring pleasure.
~Virgil
I always wonder what it would have been like. I wonder about how my life might have been if that short window of time—two minutes, three minutes at most—had gone differently. I play the moment that she fell from the sky in my mind over and over, each time willing that the iron bolt would land somewhere else. Each time it hits the target straight on.
Lying on the blanket under the stars, I wonder it anew. My back is a little sore from me having laid on it for so long, but I don’t mind. A lady bears all things, and mild discomfort is nothing.
Applejack stirs. I look over at her in the dark, but see precious little. I’m not even sure if she’s looking at me. When she speaks, her voice is warm.
“A bit for your thoughts, hon.”
I look back at the stars, and sigh. “Nothing,” I answer, knowing that we are beginning the routine again. Life is so full of them. I had so many with Rainbow, little trials and dances. It was part of knowing her.
“Yeah,” Applejack shoots back, her voice flat. Oh darling, you’ll never let anything go, will you? It’s an admirable trait, sometimes.
And perhaps it is what I need, really. “Just... remembering,” I admit.
The stars really are lovely. When Applejack isn’t too weary from a hard day’s work, I love coming out here and taking our leisure under them. Or walking. Not like how... Rainbow and I walked, but it is enjoyable. Applejack loves showing off the wide lands the Apples own, and I enjoy her pride in them. I understand it. I even echo it, in how I practically gush when given the chance to talk about the boutique to just about anypony. It’s a good thing, to be proud of the works of hoof and horn.
“Whatcha rememberin’?” she asks, and in the dark she scoots closer to me. I feel her breath on my cheek as she kisses it, and her hoof touches my own briefly.
Shall I dance around it? Dance. The word bothers me. It plays a sour note that echoes in my heart, like somepony blew across the void between one edge of the bottle and the other. It’s low and far away, and yet still I must grimace for Applejack notices.
“Rares?”
“It’s nothing,” I say perhaps too harshly, looking away. She’s still and silent: not defeated, but not willing to push yet. We’re stuck that way for awhile, until I finally roll onto my side and sit quietly on the blanket.
“Gettin’ cold,” she notes, and stands. She stretches, cracking her back with a sigh. I wince—I hate that noise, and she knows it, but she can’t stop—and nuzzles me.
It’s enough. I sigh as I, too, stand. “I was thinking about... lots of things, Applejack. Rainbow, specifically.”
She nods. I roll up the blanket for her with my magic and levitate if alongside us as she gestures back towards the house.
She doesn’t answer at first. She rarely does, actually. She usually waits and formulates, not so different in the end from her brother. But when she speaks it’s worth listening to. It’s dark, and though we’re probably fine, I summon some light to the edge of my horn and tie off the magic so that I don’t have to work to maintain it. The little source of illumination casts its harsh, white glow along our path.
I watch her walk ahead of me while she thinks. In the light of my spell, her athletic legs are well lit and I am entranced by them. Applejack really is a beautiful mare. She always has been, I thought so even when she was only my friend. Legs. The word dregs up something out of the dark waters of memory—
Twilight speaks. “When are you and Rainbow settling down?”
She winces at the sigh I let loose.
“I ask myself that often. She may be loyal and faithful, but Rainbow is hard to pin down. She wants her space…” I lower my voice and speak in a mock-conspiratorial tone. I hope to get her smiling, trying to cover up the mishap. This is the eve of her wedding after all! I don’t want her thinking about my own romantic miscues. I continue.
“And between you and me, mare to mare, sometimes I wonder if I’d see her at all sometimes if it weren’t for socks and how refined my legs are in them. Only shapely legs have the power to keep that pegasus grounded.”
—And she had laughed and I had laughed. Ha. Rarity is the toast and envy of every comic, and the crowd approves.
I take a deep breath, trying to ignore the lonely feeling. It’s like... well, it’s an awful lot like how my little sister used to dig massive holes in the sandbox my parents bought for her. The hole feels like it rests in my stomach, as if it’s almost pulling me in.
I’m being overdramatic, I know.
Applejack, hat bobbing as she turns to look at me while walking, finally speaks.
“I was thinkin’ bout Dash too, today.”
“You were?”
“Mhm. ‘Course! It’s the Runnin’ of the Leaves in a few weeks. I was just thinkin’ about running with her.” She grins widely. “You know, I never beat her. After that first time where we went at it... I never quite could. She was lighter, faster. Runnin’ like a diamond dog’s after her, you ‘member how.”
“I suppose,” I say softly.
Applejack is quiet, letting it drop.
When we reach the porch, she trots up the steps and opens the door. I reward her with a smile, as I always do. I always gave her a hard time about her country ways... but she could be polite when she wished. Which was more often than I give her credit for.
I trot through the door and into the dark living room.
Everypony’s asleep by now. Apple Bloom goes to bed early on school nights, watched over by her older brother, who also turns in before Applejack and I do. He’s a good soul, and he’s only ever been kind. I know Twilight’s been missing him while he works during the harvest, but it’s been nice seeing him more often. The more friendly faces the better.
Having Sweetie and Scootaloo visit Apple Bloom and stay over is strange. I’m not using to seeing my sister out of the context of my own home or my parents. Seeing her with her friends in Applejack’s house is just... I’m not sure. I always feel like observing silently, wondering if she acts any differently. If maybe with the warmer, smiling Applejack she’s more lively than with me in the cold boutique.
And she is more lively. It tugged at my heart, watching them run in backyard when I arrived at Sweet Apple Acres today. I am very well aware of what kind of company I must have seemed for the last year or so.
Of course, when she saw me, she smiled and waved. And of course I waved back and smiled. Here, she’s happy.
Quietly, we mount the stairs in single file. Applejack’s faster than me; she always is. There’s no dawdling, for fear of waking the sleeping fillies down the hall, and we go straight to her bedroom with all the stealth we can collectively muster. I quietly close the door with my magic.
When I look back from doing so, Applejack is lying on the bed, flat. I chuckle at her, and she looks back at me over her shoulder with a smile. She pats the bed beside her and I climb on.
I curl into the space she creates for me, my back against her. She’s warm and solid, firm and muscular from hard work... and yet soft. There’s more feminine grace in Applejack than any of us ever imagined. I’d been shocked at our second time at the Gala just how well she danced.
Regardless, she puts a foreleg around me and kisses my ear. It flicks on reflex and I roll my eyes. She knows that bothers me. She laughs quietly in my ear and I sigh at the feeling of her breath hot on my neck.
“Rarity?”
“Yes, dear?” I reply, my voice quiet.
The bed creaks slightly as she shifts her weight. I remain still.
“You sure you don’t wanna talk ‘bout it?”
I close my eyes. Do I? Not really. Should I? Perhaps.
“I was thinking about the maze.”
“The one at Twilight’s weddin’.” She kisses my neck and I shiver slightly and nod.
“That’s the one.” Of course it is, what other maze would I ever refer to in such a fashion? What other damn trick of the dark would I mention like that, as if there were more of those things? But I don’t say that.
She lets me have some space to continue, her kisses light. They don’t demand. Applejack can be gentle sometimes, I’ve found. It’s refreshing. It... reminds me. Of Rainbow. I learned how to preen her wings, and she would lie flat for me on our bed in the boutique and I would work. The only light would come from the little lamp on our bedside table, and in that light...
“I dreamt about it last night,” I say quickly, to cut off the memories. I can feel feathers beneath my hooves. My heart beats hard in my breast, as if it longed to escape. “I keep... seeing her. You remember. It was so sudden, we were sucked into the vortex from that damned trinket Fluttershy bought in the market. The one that... that... thing in disguise gave her.”
She lays her chin on my shoulder, not saying anything. She waits. She’s always waited on me, hasn’t she?
“She shouldn’t have tried to fly up. I told her that, over and over! She didn’t listen, she never listened. She was so... so....” Stupid? Yes, but I’d never say it. Brave? Probably. I realize that my voice is starting to shake, and I feel foolish. “That monster, whatever his name was—I never found out, I was gone—set up traps. Crossbows? I don’t know. I never knew! Applejack, one moment she was up in the air and the next...”
“Shh.” The foreleg tightens around me. My cheeks are hot with tears, I notice it now. I’m a fool, an absolute fool. I never meant for it to be like this. I just wanted to lie with Applejack and look at stars. I certainly did not ask for nightmares!
“Shh. Rares, it’s alright. It’s alright, really now.” She strokes my cheek with a hoof and I stiffen—
I stroke Rainbow’s cheek. “Forgive me, love, but it sounds like sculpting. Not ‘cool,’ I know—”
“Nah, that’s cool. It is a lot like that...”
—Rainbow, talking about weather work. About clouds. Myself, in her forelegs as I am now in Applejack’s, the lamp on and her book put aside for the night. Her breath warm on my mane and ear and neck like Applejack’s is now.
How she blushes! I can see it in the low light from the lamp. Rainbow’s eyes are jewels in the dark, alight with some emotion I’m too dense to catch in that moment.
“It’s…I wish you could fly, Rares. I love you just how you are, but I wish I could take you with me, up in the sky, and let you feel the wind and the rain and the electricity in the air. It’s like… music? No, not completely. It’s deeper than that; you can’t just make it and build it. The wind is going to blow with or without you. You have to turn it to better paths... like an animal, almost. A deer that some sort of predator might chase or something. I don’t know.” She is trying hard, looking for some way to describe the feeling to a sleepy me whose mind is still concerned mainly with how warm my favorite pegasus was.
I’m shivering in the cold, and no amount of covers will help. I’m shaking, and I can’t stop. It’s not dignified. It’s not proper. But I can’t stop. This is Applejack’s bed, but I wish it were ours and I don’t know what I mean when I think that. I don’t know what I feel. She rolls me over to face her, and she kisses my cheeks as if to chase the tears away and I just can’t help it. I choke, and there’s no stopping it.
I want to say that I’m sorry. That I know Rainbow was your friend too, Applejack. That I’m being selfish, crying in your bed—our bed. Is it ours? Is ours the bed in the boutique where I found a single blue feather and locked the door or is it anywhere where there’s we—I’m a fool, surely you see that.
But I still remember. The floodgates are open. Like those days were some sort of river, many waters dammed up, and now it’s breaking and I see—
Rainbow begins to speak as Twilight, myself, and she huddle in the center of the great chamber in the dark. The voices from the shadows whisper what may happen, what may come. They lie... or do they? I do not know. I just want to shut my eyes, but Rainbow won’t. She won’t stop staring at the blackness overhead. It’s all a trap, some evil trap, something trying to toy with us and she won’t leave well enough alone and stay on the ground!
“Won’t fly again, won’t fly again… What if they’re right? Rares, you gotta let me go! What if they’re right? I gotta know!”
No you don’t! You don’t have to know! You don’t have to fly up like a child because you don’t know!
The whispering transforms into laughter—discordant and sinister. Rainbow, struggling against my hooves and magic, screams against the void and the mocking. “I’ll fly! You can’t stop me from flying, you fuckers! Just you watch me! Shut up! Don’t you dare laugh, don’t you even dare!”
The laughter only intensifies. Twilight tries to help.
She is lost. Twilight knows it as soon as I cry out, I can see it in her eyes. They’re right in front of my own. We stare deeply into each other’s as if we know it all. Like this is all a play and we’re giving Rainbow her lines. A kick meant to dislodge me connects with Twilight and sends her backwards. In another moment, my manic strength fails me and I, too, am thrown to the ground. Rainbow’s wings flare open.
“Rarity... ain’t a crime to cry for her,” Applejack is saying softly, still kissing me, trying to calm me. I know I’m hideous; I know I must be making such a racket. “ I cried for her too, y’know. Loads. It’s alright. It’s gonna be alright.”
But will it? I see—
“Look! I’ll fly! That’ll show you. That’ll finally shut you up!” With a great push, she is airborne. We can only watch in mute awe as, for a split second, she seems suspended in mid-air with her powerful wings out to their fullest and her hooves reaching ahead. Then, the laughing shifts to howling and bawling. There’s a twang, a harsh whistling of something cutting the air. Rainbow twists in an unnatural fashion and fell back to earth with a sickening crunch.
I scream as the laughter and howling died away. I’m screaming something I can’t bring to mind as I stumble over to her like a mare drunk. I shake her, trying to speak but unable to. Twilight is behind me.
Iron spikes, cruel and cold, impale her. Her wings are torn and bloody. I stare at them with my mouth wide open. There are no words. One sticks out of her chest and I know, I just know, that it’s pierced something important. I can see how the blood begins to pool under her and flow over her and how she stares into my eyes and I imagine... I imagine she says that she’s sorry, but she can’t speak at all. I don’t have anything to say. I try to tell her I love her, even though she knows, but I can’t at first. My throat doesn’t respond. Twilight’s trying to get me to move, but I can’t. This isn’t real.
“Dash... Oh, Dash...”
It’s inane. It’s stupid. It’s not what I would want the second last thing I ever say to her to be.
She coughs; blood dribbles out of the corner of her mouth. How long has it been? I have no idea. Twilight is trying to do something, pull the bolts out, but nothing works. She’s dying and I just barely manage to croak out that I love her. I have no idea what I’m thinking. She’s staring at me, I don’t know why. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know if she knows but I know and I can feel her leaving me and I know she doesn’t want to—
“Applejack?”
She stops her ministrations, and I hear her whisper in my ear again.
“Yeah, sugarcube? What is it?”
“I... is it wrong, that I still love Rainbow?” The words burn my throat. A lady tells the truth, whatever the cost to herself. I have to remember that. I must.
She’s silent. She’s quiet such a very long time that it begins to worry me. My heart begins to beat again in my throat, and I cough. I wish the answer would rush out with the force of memory, but it doesn’t. It won’t. This is Applejack. Applejack doesn’t rush in, not like Rainbow. Applejack is not Rainbow. I love her, but she is Applejack and she cannot help that.
Do I want her to? To not be? I don’t know.
“Nah,” she says at last, and I sigh.
“Nah,” she says again, with more force behind it. “It ain’t wrong. You loved Rainbow, I always saw it in how y’all acted. Ya adored her.”
I nod, feeling small.
“She loved you, Rares. Loved you a lot, a whole lot. It used to amaze me how much she loved you, enough to live on the ground. Do you know how crazy that is? Rainbow Dash, fastest pegasus in the sky, slummin’ it with us on the ground.”
I sniff, and nod again. I’ve said more than enough tonight. She goes back to straightening my mane. She knows it calms me. That’s how Applejack is. She learns little things, bit by bit, a scholar at heart, though she’d scoff. But she learns. Rainbow did too, eventually. But you had to guide her. You had to take Rainbow by the hoof and lead her, step by step, but it was wonderful how excited she was. Oh, but her eyes use to glow.
“I’d be surprised if you didn’t,” she finishes, the strength going out of it. I remember being a child in a dark hall, afraid that any moment I’d fall down the stairs because I didn’t know how long the hall was. How each step shied away from where I meant it to land, like her voice does.
“I’m sorry, dear,” I manage, only to be shushed again. But I don’t mind it. Not tonight, after all this.
“Don’t be.”
We lie in the dark.