Flim, Flam, and the Little Lost Apple Scam
Compassion and Confessions
Morning, as defined by Princess Luna and Princess Celestia, was many hours from now.
Morning, as defined by Apple Sprout, was now.
Morning, as defined by Applejack, was not coming around nearly as quick as she wanted, and after catching Sprout crawling out of the bassinet and heading for freedom for the uncounted time, she decided it was time for another Apple tradition.
The Long Quiet Walk in the Nighttime Orchard to Calm Wriggly Little Foals.
Despite the darkness inside the old farmhouse, Rarity’s modifications to the foal carrier made it easy to slip Apple Sprout inside and up onto Applejack’s back afterward, even though the unwilling passenger expressed her preferences for a brisk game of chase instead. The foal did calm down once Applejack started moving, and by the time the two of them were outside in the beautiful night among the moonlit apple trees, Sprout had stopped her incessant wriggling in exchange for just looking around and marveling at her shadowed surroundings.
Applejack had to admit she was getting as much out of the walk as Sprout. The blatant way those two worthless unicorns had pulled the hat right down over her eyes irked her, and the way her own friend turned Applejack’s words back against her only made it worse. Some time alone… well, not quite alone with the trees and the family was just what the doctor would have ordered, if Applejack had anything to say about it. The comforting feeling of family that filled her heart during the walk was much the same as her first memories of when Applejack had been walked by her mother, and when she in turn had to walk Apple Bloom after their parents’ passing.
There was something loving about the night air under the trees, filled with the scent of wood and growing leaves from the sleeping orchard, that got into the lungs and the chest during each step. It calmed her frequently irate temper just as well as bringing a sliver of peace to her during troubled times now as well as back then. As long as the trees were there, all was right with the world, even during the difficulties she had with the unexpected passing of her parents. When it was her turn to take the responsibility for her precious baby sister, Applejack would walk through the dark orchard far longer than she needed to with Apple Bloom drooling on her back and dreaming foal dreams, most likely of getting her cutie mark.
Tonight, it was just as dark as ever with deceptive shadows beneath the cover of the trees, but Applejack could walk through the familiar orchard with her eyes closed if she had to. It gave her the missing peace that she was needing something fierce, and an unexplained urge to go visit her parents so she could introduce them to the newest little Apple from Marian, even if she wasn’t Applejack’s own.
The quiet clearing where her parents and various relatives now rested from their labors was not that far away from the house, just a few short ambling minutes in the moonlight-speckled darkness. Her hooves could have found it all by themselves with as many times as Applejack had stopped to exchange a word or two with Ma or Pa during particularly trying times. But tonight, even that respite was denied to her when Applejack emerged from under the trees. What she saw would have made her shout loud enough to wake up her entire family if not for Apple Sprout slumbering on her back.
One of the two yellow unicorn brothers was just lying in the middle of a pool of moonlight, sobbing quietly into the short grass. He did not seem to notice Applejack’s arrival at all, or the fuming silence she carried with her. She kept expecting for the frozen tableau to be interrupted by some sort of singing advertisement for a deceptive product or a plug for monetary contributions, but the longer she stood there, the less changed.
Torn between anger and curiosity, Applejack stood in the shadows of the trees for a long time, just watching the unicorn and remaining silent. If this was some sort of scheme to con money out of other ponies or betray Applejack more than she already had been, it was a durned strange way to go about it. She was just about ready to return home so the brother could be alone with his scheme, if not for the abrupt hiccup and sleepy yawn from Apple Sprout.
Flim looked up abruptly, frantically attempting to wipe away his tears while calling out in a harsh whisper, “Who’s there? Flam, is that you?”
“No, it ain’t.” Applejack emerged out into the moonlight and tried to put on her best firm face, which was made more difficult by the red eyes and the soggy tear trails down the face of her unwelcome guest.
“Oh! Miss Applejack.” Flim took off his hat while scrambling to his hooves and bent down in a short bow. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you is.” She hesitated a moment at the sight of the normally prim and proper unicorn looking so dejected and frazzled, then instead of chasing him back to the barn like her every instinct was telling her, added, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothi—” Flim cut off abruptly when Apple Sprout, who must have heard his voice, gave out a wordless coo and stretched out her forelegs as if waiting to be picked up by her father. The young unicorn stallion just froze while looking at his daughter. Then, ever so slowly, the false mask of normality he was attempting to project shattered into pieces, and with a noise much like a falling tree, he fell right down on the grass again, curled up into a ball, and began to bawl like an injured foal.
* ♥ *
Applejack had never been very good with tears, particularly with older ponies who should have outgrown such foolishness when they were younger. She preferred to keep her tears on the inside, but dealing with the crying adult unicorn and trying to keep the infant unicorn from crying along with her father was taxing her tired nerves to the breaking point. What was worse, the source of Flim’s tears seemed to be the frightened foal, who was terribly confused about how she was causing all the fuss, and in the way that foals do, was reacting by crying, of course.
In the end, she managed to get little Sprout curled up in the crook of one leg while Flim sat just a short distance away, staring at the ground and still quivering with the occasional muted sob. Applejack murmured quietly to Sprout and rocked her until she started to breathe slowly and drift back to sleep, then whispered to the despondent unicorn.
“You gonna tell me what’s goin’ on?” She lowered her voice. “If you’ve done something to hurt your daughter, I’m gonna skin you alive.”
At first, Flim just shook his head. Then, after nearly a minute of rigid inactivity, he began to slowly nod.
“She’s not my daughter.”
Applejack’s breath caught in her throat. From where she was sitting, it would only take one quick motion to kick the lying scoundrel in the back of the head. She probably could do it even without waking up the foal, and even if she accidentally kicked him a mite hard…
The comforting warmth of Apple Sprout nestled against her chest made her take a deep breath instead, and once it came back out, it was formed into a quiet, “Talk. And make it good.”
“Apple Sprout isn’t my daughter.” He turned just enough to look at the foal out of the corner of his eye and lit up his horn with a dim green glimmer. A small pearlescent bead of light floated free from his magic, matched by a tiny green dot from the sleeping foal, and when they met, the two dots swirled around each other without mixing until the spell faded away.
“The Parenting Pair-Up Spell,” he explained. “My real daughter must have been in another orphanage outside of Appleloosa somewhere. She must be adopted by now. I didn’t even try to find her. Whoever adopted her will do a better job of rearing her than we would.”
“Ah see,” whispered Applejack once she was sure no more words were going to be squeezed out of the lying scoundrel without some of her own.
“No, you don’t.” The stallion took a shuddering breath and looked away. “I don’t deserve to be a father, and no daughter deserves me as one. After I found out Marian had given up our child… I was angry. At her. At me. At my own brother. All I could think of was that infernal machine trapped in Appleloosa, just as much a foal of ours as… whatever name my daughter has now.”
Flim looked away into the orchard. “I had a plan. Part of a plan, at least. We needed a lever to get our machine out of Appleloosa, and with you being trusted there…”
“Ah’m a lever,” said Applejack, levelly.
“Apple Sprout was our lever,” explained Flim in what was beginning to sound like a confession, but still had none of the pride that either of the brothers tended to use when describing even the worst of their schemes. “You were to be our tool. A patsy by proxy, because you were a sucker for kinfolk, and we knew you would not turn us into the law if it would hurt your family. So I found an orphanage, faked the Parenting Pair-Up spell for the orphan matron, swore on my mother’s grave that Apple Sprout was mine.”
His shoulders hunched even further, and Flim stared at the dry stubby grass underneath him. “I lied to my brother. He could have done the Pair-Up spell and found out how badly I lied to him, but he trusted me. Just like you trusted me, Applejack.”
From the set of Flim’s shoulders, that was as much as he was going to say, even if Applejack were to beat him up like she wanted to. Both fury and disgust roared through her chest and made her ears ring with the urge, but she fought it down, particularly in this hallowed place. Instead, she thought.
She thought about the pool of moonlight they were both sitting in, and Princess Luna. Ma and Pa. The farm. And most of all, the tiny unicorn foal slumbering in the crook of her foreleg, just the same way she had slumbered in Ma and Pa’s embrace, and her Pa had slept while being held by Granny Smith. Apple Sprout was not kinfolk, but she had gotten attached to Applejack’s heart like the most perfect tree graft. She may not have been an Apple, but there were a durned lot of ponies who had joined the family tree and grown up tall and strong. In fact, half of Applejack was technically a Pear, from when Pear Butter had the fortune to fall for the tall and dashing Bright Mac. A short life at the farm but a full one, stuffed to the brim with joy and three beautiful children. Ma would not have hesitated for a moment to bring in another child, Apple or no Apple, because Pear had a heart as big as the entire orchard.
Sometimes when she thought about her mother, it made Applejack feel like a wobbly-kneed foal all over again.
“You loved her, didn’t you?” Applejack brushed a stray tuft of dry grass off Flim’s coat while the unicorn simply nodded. “You still love her. I can see it in your eyes. Your brother, the varmint, looks at me every time I go by like I’m some shiny bit or somethin’ precious he can steal, but you just look once and get that fuzzy expression like yer thinkin’ of somepony else.”
Flim hesitated, then nodded again.
“Look, I ain’t good at this mushy emotional stuff. Truth is, all I really want to do now is kick you and your varmint brother’s behind all the way over the horizon. It ain’t that you two lied to me. Heck, I’m getting kinda used to it. Shocks me senseless whenever either of you comes out and tells the truth, really.” Applejack boosted the sleeping Apple Sprout over closer to her not-father. “So what if she ain’t yours. If’n she was, you’d be a good papa to her, right?”
“No.” Flim’s voice was barely over a whisper, and he looked away.
“Say what?” Applejack nudged the reluctant unicorn with one hoof. “You can’t just say nuttin’ like that and not explain yourself.”
Flim still did not look back at her, but he raised his voice just enough for Applejack to hear. “Even if she were really mine, she wouldn't really be all mine now, would she? She’d be part of Marian and part of myself, and I’d be betraying that wonderful mare by raising up her daughter to be a dishonest salespony like ourselves. Since Apple Sprout isn’t mine or hers, she’s got a much better future ahead with you. Provided you’ll take her in, that is.”
“Well I’ll be,” said Applejack after a long, long pause. “Mebbie you ain’t such a rotten apple as you think.”
“No, lovely mare.” Flim slowly shook his head, still looking away. “On that, you’re quite correct. We’re not even Apples.”
“Like heck you ain’t.” She took two steps over to a familiar stone in the moonlit shadow of a nearby apple tree. “This here’s mah granpappy’s resting spot, an’ here’s Ma and Pa right beside him. Got a couple of grand-uncles over there, an’ some cousins here and there. Reckon that’s why I was headed here tonight, an’ why you did too. When you’re hurtin’, you go back to your roots, to be with family, and this is the closest you’ve got to family around here.”
Apparently he was as hard-headed as an Apple too, because Flim just kept looking off into the orchard as if he had not heard a single word she had said. It was going to take more than words to get through to him, so Applejack spit onto one hoof and began to vigorously rub it against his apple-shaped cutie mark. Flim recoiled with a startled, wide-eyed expression.
“Hey!”
“Hey yourself,” said Applejack, holding up her hoof. “It don’t rub off, so you sure look like an Apple to me.” It only made it more obvious that she was not like the other Bearers. Pinkie Pie would have had him in stitches. So would Rainbow Dash, but real stitches, as well as a few broken limbs.
“Family is more than just blood,” said Flim, touching one hoof to his chest. “Family runs far deeper into the heart where it hurts the most. Apples don’t hurt anypony, while I hurt both you and my brother with my words.”
“Your lies, you mean,” said Applejack. “Heck, I’ve lied before too, just ain’t no good at it and it always comes back to bite me on the rump.”
“Some of us live our lies,” said Flim. “You don’t. It doesn’t really matter now. I’ve told you, and you’re going to tell Princess Sparkle. I spotted her looking over our machine last night. She went right to the parts I was afraid she was going to. She knows our apple sorter used parts out of the machine we stole from Appleloosa, and even if she’s willing to overlook that, she’s certainly not going to overlook me stealing a foal.”
“Eh.” Applejack considered the problem and came to much the same conclusion. “Yeah.”
“Then this is goodbye.” Flim turned in the direction of the barn, although mostly she suspected the motion was to avoid looking at Apple Sprout. “We’ll be leaving before sunrise. It’s better that way.”
“Lots of practice, I suppose.” Applejack’s heart sank further when Flim just nodded without responding. She considered what Marian said before they left Appleloosa, but decided not to pass that along and make him feel worse. “Look, I figure we can spot you a few bits for the trip.”
“Save it for the ponies we cheated,” said Flim. “We’ve got a cache of bits stashed in the bottom of the wagon for emergencies.”
Applejack bristled. “You mean you done lied about that too?” It only took a breath to calm down, and she let it out in a long sigh. “Well, if’n I can’t give you no money, at least I can give you a head start. Ah won’t tell nopony until some time after sunup. And take along a bushel or two of apples for the road. No need for you two to go hungry.”
“Thank you.” Flim paused and added, “Cousin.” He turned back with the shadow of a welcome smile on his face, took a long look at the tiny sleeping unicorn, and forced his eyes upward to face Applejack. “I’ll leave the papers from the orphanage behind so you can get her adopted honestly. With a princess on your side, you shouldn’t have any trouble.”
“One thing Twi likes is her papers.” She took another glance at the sleeping foal. “Probably won’t by the time this is all over, but that’s okay.”
Flim nodded. “She may not be mine, but I want you to take good care of her. Raise her right so she’ll be an honest Apple, like the rest of your family.”
“Sure will.” Applejack nodded back. “An’ you two be careful out there. Lots of crooks and no-goods wandering around.”
There was a faint glint of familiar larceny in Flim’s eyes when he wrinkled up his nose and gave her a peculiar smile. “We’ll take ’em for every half-bit they own.” Even that wan smile faded into a forced look of calm. “Good night, Applejack.”
“Good night.” Applejack paused and gave him a small smile back. “Scoundrel.”
Flim moved cautiously over to the foal carrier and kissed the sleeping foal, then gave Applejack a gentle kiss on the cheek. After a brief awkward pause, they parted ways, each going back to their own building in the dark.
The walk back to the house passed far too swiftly, and before Applejack could even put a single thought together, she was climbing the stairs back to her own bedroom. At least the walk tired out the wriggling foal, leaving Sprout snoring her cute teakettle whistle when Applejack tucked her into the bassinet beside the bed.
It was a strange sensation to know the foal she had grown to love was not from genuine Apple stock, but it really did not bother Applejack one whit. She was still the cute and mischievous little unicorn from before, just as much cared for and appreciated as Applejack could possibly feel in her own heart, much the same as she could remember her own mother cooing over a basket of joy with Apple Bloom.
Still, there was something missing from tonight. If only there had been a way to have gotten honest smiles out of both of the troublemaking varmints before they left.
Oh, well. They’ll be gone in the morning and life can get back to its new value of normal.