As the afternoon aged, the shortened days of winter bled from Celestia’s realm into her sister’s. The evening was clear save for a confused peppering of clouds in the sky; uncertain of their purpose, they dusted various portions of Ponyville in intermittent sheets of puffy, light snowflakes.
Three ponies sat around a breakfast table in the Carousel Boutique’s modest kitchen. A fourth, the matron of the establishment herself, approached the others alongside a levitated platter of etched silver, with four ceramic mugs balanced perfectly atop it. She slid a beverage before each pony, saving the last for herself as she set the serving tray aside.
For a time, the group did nothing but watch a snow squall and allow their chosen drinks to fill them with a lasting warmth. Applejack finally broke the silence.
“There ain’t nothin’ quite like being all toasty warm while watchin’ the snow fall.”
“Eeeyup,” Scootaloo added in a high-pitched tone that did not suit her word choice.
“Except there ain’t no holiday in it anymore,” Apple Bloom moped, her look the most distant of them all.
Rarity stood behind her friend and the fillies, watching them as they considered the weather. She took a long drag from her cup, allowing the pleasant heat to permeate her like a poultice. It calmed and centered her, rebuilding the sandbags that had momentarily collapsed and allowed the torrent of her turbulent emotions through. Her cheek still stung a bit, but she was glad for any sensation that could help her cope with reality.
“As I was saying, girls,” She spoke, drawing all attention to her, “It’s about time you had the whole story.”
The Crusaders were all ears. Rarity continued.
“Sweetie Belle is feeling self-conscious right now. I suppose I cannot entirely speak for her on her true feelings, but doubtless part of the reason she does not wish to be seen is that she feels…how shall a put this,” She paused, “…unattractive.”
“Huh?” Apple Bloom snorted, drawing several drops of hot cocoa into her muzzle that elicited a choking sneeze. “But she got muddier than our whole pigpen at the Sisterhooves Social a couple months ago!”
“Yeah,” Scootaloo added, “And when we were doing that play about the Buckton Tea Party, she had more tar and feathers on her than any of us. And she had a great time!”
Rarity wracked her brain, “It’s…more than that, darlings. You see, she’s in a considerable amount of pain lately because the treatment to make her feel better also makes her sick…”
Apple Bloom’s expression showed a complete lack of understanding. “Well that’s just plumb silly. Why would she be getting better and feeling even more sick at the same time?”
Scootaloo rested her chin on the table and put her attention on her mug, pushing it idly back and forth between her hooves. “When’s Sweetie Belle going to get better?”
“She…that is…” Rarity felt her words close around her like gnarled branches from the deepest depths of the Everfree. “She, well…she’s sick, but getting better makes her feel worse, and yet getting better is something that…may or may not…”
Applejack slammed her mug down on the table with more force than intended. Garnering attention, she rolled with the faux-pas and blurted out the truth-
“Sweetie Belle has cancer, girls.”
Incomprehension passed back and forth between the foals like a low-hanging storm cloud.
“Y’all don’t know what that is, do ya,” Applejack presumed.
Scootaloo scratched her chin, “I remember in school once, Twist said something about her great-grandmare having that. Isn’t it just something old nags get?”
Applejack took a deep breath, preparing to craft another response, but her eye caught the image of Rarity, who was standing next to the table twiddling her hooves. Applejack smiled encouragingly in her friend’s direction.
“I don’t think it’s my place to go into detail, girls. Why don’tcha let Rarity explain it.”
Rarity closed her eyes. Deep inside, she visualized the thorny roots that had taken hold of her heart as they grew up into her mind, coiling around her brain and confusing her thoughts. Visibly gritting her teeth, she let out a grunt and hefted an imaginary machete, coming down on each vine with a well-wetted knife of frustration.
“Cancer is a disease, girls,” Rarity stated. “Anypony can get it, at any age.” She swirled her mug with her magic, staring down at the churning froth within as she considered how best to put the concept to the minds of foals. “I am far from a medical professional so forgive me for my laypony explanation, but cancer is when…well, it’s a growth. Inside your body. That’s not supposed to be there.”
Scootaloo’s chin-scratching became head-scratching. Apple Bloom squinted.
“Somethin’s growin’ in her body?” The earth filly asked. “Like what?”
Shock suddenly overwhelmed Scootaloo’s features. “Don’t foals grow inside your body?”
“Sweetie Belle’s pregnant!?” Apple Bloom blurted. “B-but wha…how??”
Applejack yanked her hat off, tossed it on empty chair, and rested her forehead in one hoof, sighing deeply. “Naw, naw, girls, that ain’t it…”
Rarity sought to regain control of the conversation. “What I mean is, Sweetie Belle has something growing inside her. It’s not a foal. It’s not a creature of any kind. It’s a malignant collection of cells that are growing improperly, that are damaging otherwise healthy parts of her from the inside.”
Another round of dumbfounded stares cost Applejack a sliver of her patience. “Look, all the details ain’t important. What is important is that Sweetie Belle, she’s…real sick.”
Rarity kept up her explanation anyway, “The therapy she’s going through right now is a certain school of magic called chemomancy. It’s designed to target the cells inside her, stunt their growth, and…hopefully destroy them. The trouble is,” She paused, collecting herself again, “It’s a…very aggressive technique, and the magic doesn’t always understand which cells it’s supposed to attack.”
“If something bad is growing inside Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo reasoned, “Can’t Princess Twilight or somepony else just…transport it out of her?”
Rarity fought back the emotion and continued to wade through the difficult topic. She drained her mug so quickly that she turned back to the counter for more. “Sometimes they can, dear. But there are certain cancers that are so well embedded in certain parts of the body that removing them simply through teleportation runs a very high risk of…removing the affected body part, as well. Or some portion of it that’s too significant to do without.”
Scootaloo hesitated. Apple Bloom didn’t.
“What part of her body has it?”
Rarity doubled the touch of nutmeg in her second cup of warm eggnog. She paused at the counter, her gaze tracing the wavy patterns of the decorative backsplash.
“…it’s in her brain, dear.”
When nopony spoke, Rarity continued. Her voice became husky, and as she spoke, Applejack came to understand why her friend refused to turn around.
“Brain cancer is…far more common in unicorn ponies,” She touched her head, “because of our horns and our magic. The exact causes are difficult to determine, but one of the theories suggests that since magic is a naturally unpredictable and chaotic thing, overuse of it by a unicorn can potentially result in unexpected effects centering on the area around our heads.” Her tail drooped, “…some say that too much exposure by one unicorn’s magic to another could be as much of a factor…that the clashing magic auras could cause mutations…”
Applejack pushed away from the table so quickly that she rent the stillness with a jarring skid-noise from the legs of her chair. She trotted over to Rarity and had a hoof on her withers before either of the Crusaders could so much as absorb the new information.
“Rarity, this ain’t your fault,” Applejack insisted.
Rarity quickly dispelled a wayward tear with a wipe of her hoof. “I…I want to believe that, but…what…what if…what if I did this to her…just by using magic around her…? If she was somehow more susceptible to the condition—“
“Now yer just speculatin’ ahead of the evidence,” Applejack replied quickly. “I read the paperwork from the hospital too, and ain’t nopony knows if being ‘more susceptible’ means anythin’, or if it’s just another theory. If it were that simple, then every single unicorn in Equestria would end up like this just from bein’ around their own kin long enough. Celestia only knows what would happen to ponies like Twilight, who cast complicated magic spells nearly every day, or to foals in magic kindergarten classes.”
Rarity’s voice became ghostly thin, “…b-but what if I did do this to her…? What if this is all my fault…?”
Applejack began to stroke her friend’s downy-soft coat with a hoof. “It ain’t your fault,” She repeated. “You can’t think that way. It won’t do you no good, and it won’t do Sweetie Belle no good neither.”
“I know, but…but…”
Rarity’s lip quivered. Applejack gently slipped her forelegs around her friend and took her in a firm embrace, angling Rarity’s chin onto her shoulder. Rarity’s blubbering matched the shudders Applejack felt under her stroking hoof.
“Shh…it’s alright Sugarcube,” Applejack cooed, adding in the nickname she reserved for foals, “It’s gonna be alright…you gotta believe that…”
Both Cutie Mark Crusaders politely averted their attention to the remainder of their beverages. Each one busied themselves with a long sip, but the silence, coupled with light sobbing from the room’s only unicorn, quickly became too much for the room’s only Pegasus.
“Sweetie Belle’s gonna get better…isn’t she?”
“A’course she is,” Applejack insisted. Rarity, still facing away from the Crusaders and lost in her friend’s embrace, shook her head and lightly batted Applejack’s chest with a hoof.
“…don’t lie to them dear. Please,” Rarity said weakly, “…we’ve already hidden too much from Sweetie Belle’s best friends.”
Applejack berated herself mentally for the deliberately misleading statement. She sighed, and replied again.
“…we dunno, girls.”
Applejack felt a wetness on her cheeks. She was not a pony given easily to open shows of sorrow, but when her eyes settled on Apple Bloom, she considered what things might be like if she were the afflicted filly. The image sliced through Applejack’s rough exterior like a hot knife through butter, creating a thin wound where visible despair began to leak out.
Apple Bloom glanced at her young friend, only to find the Pegasus frozen in shock. Apple Bloom nearly joined her, but a sliver of Apple family tenacity drove her on.
“Is that why she told us she ain’t a Cutie Mark Crusader no more?”
Applejack wasn’t certain how to reply. Sensing the hesitation, Rarity sniffed sharply and pulled away from her friend’s embrace, patting her gently on the shoulder and favoring her with an appreciative look before turning to the fillies. Her mascara was running, but she didn’t seem the least big ashamed of it.
“As I’ve said darlings, I cannot speak for her. However, I doubt her illness alone is the reason she would say such a thing.” She blinked hard several times, beating the feelings back down, and elaborated-
“The type of chemomancy Sweetie Belle is receiving is designed to attack the cancerous cells, but one major flaw of it is that it cannot easily differentiate between those cells and the cells that make up the follicles of her hair. I suspect the reason she does not want to see the both of you is because she’s feeling self-conscious about her appearance.
“How bad is it…?” Apple Bloom galloped hard against the gravity of the situation and continued her questioning.
“Most of her tail is gone,” Rarity explained, “and her mane is…very, very thin. Furthermore, she has bare patches throughout her body where sections of her coat have fallen out.”
The Crusaders shared another look. Each of their eyes then slipped down to a view of the other’s cutie mark. Rarity didn’t wait for them to ask the inevitable question.
“The magic of your cutie mark is more than skin deep, darlings, but the physical mark is not. If you were to shave your flank completely bare, the mark would still grow back, and what it represents would still be a part of who you are, but visually it would nonetheless be…gone.”
The Crusader’s questions ceased. There was no room for misinterpretation of the latest information. The two young ponies simply locked eyes and stared blankly at one another, communicating their feelings wordlessly while each young mind tried to interpret the monumental implications. Their thoughts became so turbulent that even weeping became beyond their ability to process mentally.
“I-I’m sorry,” Rarity suddenly pulled away and trotted for the door, “I…I just can’t…talk about this anymore. All of you are welcome to stay as long as you like. Please make yourselves at home. I…I…”
She struggled for words. As she vanished from the room, she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind and bowed hastily.
“H-Happy Hearth’s Warming.”
The three remaining ponies sat in a stunned silence, broken up only by the ticking of a clock and the incessant sounds of caroling from down another street. Applejack returned to the table and retrieved her hat, tugging her scarf tighter around her neck with her teeth.
“I guess we better get goin’,” She commented. “I’m sorry girls. But y’all were right. It wasn’t right to try to protect you both from this. And for what it’s worth Apple Bloom,” She turned to her sister, weary bags of puffy red forming under her eyes, “I’d have made the same scene you did out on the street earlier, if I had been in your boots. I’m sorry.”
Apple Bloom blinked hard. “Sweetie Belle’s gonna die, ain’t she.”
Applejack shook her head, “I’d be lyin’ if I said I could answer that fer sure. But a fifty percent chance of not makin’ it ain’t no more or less a guarantee than a fifty percent chance of makin’ it. Listen—” Somehow, she managed the tiniest hint of a reassuring smile, “The both of you…you gotta believe. If y’all dwell on the worst and let it consume you, then the worst is just what’ll happen.” She thought about it, and then offered a curious quip, “Apple Bloom, did I ever tell you the story of your great uncle Orange Pekoe?”
Apple Bloom was thrown off by the odd inquiry. She cradled her mug between her hooves and shook her head, “Don’t think so. Why?”
Reunited again with her Stetson, Applejack laid a hoof on the table and watched the light snowfall. “Orange Pekoe was a delivery pony for a grocer in the big city. He used to pull a big covered cart – so big that you could get inside it and walk around. That cart had a special enchantment on it to keep it cold inside, so he could transport perishable foods over longer distances.” She took a breath and continued, “One day, he accidentally got locked inside his own cart. And he froze to death.”
Apple Bloom shivered at the grisly story, but offered no comment. She wasn’t sure what value the tale had in the current situation, but her big sister didn’t leave her in the dark for long.
“Thing is – it was only about forty-five degrees inside his cart that day. Just enough to keep the vegetables he was carryin’ from one city to the next from spoiling.”
“Huh?” Scootaloo raised a brow. “How is that possible? That’s not cold enough to freeze you.”
“No it ain’t,” Applejack agreed. “But you see, Orange Pekoe was about the stubbornest pony who was ever kin of ours, and in the Apple family that’s sayin’ something. You’d think that’d mean nothing would ever kill him, but when he convinced himself of somethin’, there just wasn’t ever any way to talk him out of it. And the one thing he used to tell his family that he was afraid of was someday getting locked in his cart and freezing to death.” She finally turned to look at the fillies, her stare grave, “He believed he was gonna die. So he died. The moral is, if you believe strong enough in somethin’ – and I mean so strong you ain’t got even the slightest notion of doubt – then you can usually find a way to make it happen.”
She paused. Let the words sink in. Finally, she offered the fillies a smile of appreciation. “I gotta say, I’m real proud of the both of you. Y’all are takin’ this better than anypony could have expected, and if there were any two ponies out there that could believe in something strong enough to change the world, I think it would be you two.”
Scootaloo battled through a sharp sniffle, “B-but it doesn’t matter what we believe…Sweetie Belle has to believe in it.”
Apple Bloom’s hoof came down on the table so hard she nearly spilled her drink. Emulating her sister, she shoved her way out of the chair to the tune of a loud scraping noise and stood tall on her hooves.
“Then there’s only one thing we can do,” She announced. “We gotta get in there to see her.”
“What good will that really do, though?” Scootaloo asked, despair gnawing at her thoughts and conjuring up the pessimistic statement. “If she doesn’t wanna see us—“
“Then we gotta make her wanna see us,” Apple Bloom insisted. “We gotta get her to open that door, no matter what it takes. Think about it. If it were you sittin’ in there, all alone and hurting, what would you be thinkin’ about?”
Scootaloo shrugged, “I’d…probably be wondering when I’m gonna die.”
“Exactly!” Apple Bloom blurted. “And if she keeps thinkin’ that way, then that’s exactly what’s gonna happen. We gotta make her believe that she’s gonna be okay, and I’ll tell ya plain,” Apple Bloom’s confidence set the room on fire, “We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders! We all go home or nopony goes home, and I ain’t goin’ home until Sweetie Belle knows she’s gonna be okay!”
“Woah there,” Applejack cautioned, “It’s good you wanna help, but you two can’t just buck down her door. You gotta respect her space.”
“Then how do we get in?” Scootaloo asked.
Apple Bloom hooked her foreleg around one of Scootaloo’s and yanked the pegasus abruptly to her hooves. “I know exactly how we’re getting in there. But we gotta do it together. You in?”
Scootaloo wiped away a tear and broke into a squirmy smile. “W-wild windigoes and a hungry dragon couldn’t stop me.”
“Cutie Mark Crusaders forever!!” Apple Bloom cried, holding out her foreleg, “Hoof bump!”
Scootaloo returned the declaration and the gesture, and the two of them were out of the room before Applejack could repeat her warning against doing anything rash.
The elder Apple sister sat alone in the kitchen, staring down at her empty mug. She watched as a single tear plopped down into it. She wiped her cheek, but paused as she touched her own lips, turning to a mirror to confirm what she was feeling.
A smile sat firmly on her lips.
“The last pony in Equestria who’d ever give up at something is you, little sister,” Applejack whispered. “I’d put your spirit before anypony I know. Including myself.”
She rose, sat her cup down, and went to find Rarity.