//------------------------------// // Drop a heart, break a name // Story: Just Around the Corner // by KorenCZ11 //------------------------------//             In a strange way, I really did feel better now. Not better like earlier, but better in the sense that the weight had truly lessened a little instead of becoming so heavy that it’d crushed me already. Course, I’d never walked through town with a stallion at my side before either. Maybe, just maybe, that had a little to do with putting me in a better mood.             In the back of my head, I still expected him to break with me and run for the train station, but considering my earlier surprise, it’s possible Rarity has warped my view of stallions. ‘Nopony ever stays, nopony comes back for more, nopony really loves you. They just use those sweet words to get what they want from you then run back home.’             If nothing else, Fin is two for three.             It was about eight thirty, and ponies were milling about the morning in Ponyville. The Farmer’s Market would open in half an hour so fruit and vegetable carts were being wheeled to and fro, shops were starting to turn their signs around, all the coffee serving cafe’s had opened their umbrellas and had ponies sitting out in the morning air. The sun had risen enough to make the castle shine, scattering blues and violets all over the place like a disco ball.             “You know, I remember the castle being bad in the middle of the day, but I can’t help but think this is even worse than I remember,” Fin commented, blocking some reflected light out of his eyes.             “Oh, yes, it’s always this bad. Always. The morning here hasn’t been the same in a year, and frankly, it never will be. Nice on the inside, but an eyesore, literally, fer the better part of the day. Course, the town loves Twilight and Twilight loves Ponyville even if she didn’t when she first got here, so there’s nothin’ ta be done about it. Maybe she’ll come up with somethin' next time we talk. Ah’m not alone in my opinion about it anymore, or, rather, more than just me is willin’ ta say it.”             Casually, Fin smiled and moved a little closer. “Well, I can’t say I’m always open about my opinions, especially in front of my superiors. Speaking freely without permission can get you in trouble… but you really do know her, eh? The Princess, I mean.”             “Know her? Ah know all of ‘em! The kinda shit we got inta felt like the world was endin’ every other week! It’s as if, for some reason, every bad thing Celestia ever stopped decided to wake up and throw shit inta chaos just because the girls and I were suddenly involved.”             Fin stroked his goatee. “‘Celestia,’ huh? No title beforehoof?”             I sighed. “At this point, that would be more rude ta her than usin’ it. Enough meetin’s and gatherin’s with her and ya stop seein’ the princess and start seein’ the pony. Couldn’t ever call Twi ‘princess’ after that happened; Ah’d known her so long. You ever see ‘em?”             “Nah,” Fin began. “Well, not up close and personal anyways. She’ll give us a speech before we’re sent off from the academy, but unless a war breaks out or there’s a disaster somewhere, a soldier won’t make contact with a princess until they can get promoted to the Royal Guard.”             “Huh.” I wonder if she ever met Pappy. Granny has a picture with her and Pa somewhere, back when she was young and he was just a foal. “Ah suppose that makes sense. Ah’m the one with an unusual relationship, after all.”             Fin huffed. “No kidding. I thought I picked well that night, but I had no idea you had connections too.”             I narrowed my eyes at him. Mmhmm. That’s what you’re really like, ain’t it?             As if he’d read my thoughts, “Wait, that came out wrong. You don’t seem like the kind of pony who would know royalty.”             I rolled my eyes. “Uh-huh. What ya mean ta say is, ‘Ya act too much like a hick ta be a snob,’ right?”             He held a hoof up in defense. “Okay, hostile much?”             I was silent for a moment then looked away. Maybe I am moody. “Sorry. Ah shouldn’t be lookin’ fer the worst in ya.”             He chuckled. “Is that all? Let me tell ya: if I can keep it that way, you’ll never see the worst in me. I don’t think I’m a bad guy, but I get it. You’re cautious. There were… a lot of firsts that night, huh?”             I let out a breath, and with it, nearly all of my hostility. I didn’t know why, but the way he carried himself so easily put me at ease. “Gracious, ain’t’cha?” He shrugged, I continued, “Yes, there certainly were. It’s not like me ta go ta a bar. It’s not like me ta hit on ponies, it’s not like me ta… be the pony Ah was that night.”             He frowned. “Bad week?”             “Bad week? Bad week!? More like a bad year!” I was about ta blow up on him when I noticed the eyes. I kept my mouth shut and grabbed his hoof. “Let’s hurry on ta the barn.”             Fin bowed and held out a hoof. “Take the lead and I’ll follow.”             And with that, we hurried on, hoof in hoof. Practically galloped through the rest of town and down the road to the Orchard. We passed the bar and I cursed it. We made it to the gates and I checked to see if anypony would notice us. Mac was nowhere near, Sugarbelle was in the kitchen away from the window, so Applebloom was probably out in the fields with Mac.             Running to the opposite side of the house, we quickly hid in the barn. At nine and with just the two of them working, nopony would need anything in here for a few hours at the minimum.             Clearing a spot beside where I used to drink myself to sleep, we sat down. Fin took a moment to look around. When something caught his eye, he got up and walked over to one of the walls.             “Ah. You have been having it rough recently, haven’t you?” From a pile of hay, he picked up the broken neck of an empty bottle.             And here I thought nopony would ever find that thing. “It’s not been great.”             He put the bottleneck back down and came to sit beside me. “Tell me about it.”             I did not know this stallion. I had a few inclinations, made a note that he had sharp eyes, a handsome face, and a quick wit, but I really didn’t understand what he was like.  Despite that, I told him everything like it’d all been building up inside waiting to pour out at the first opportunity. From the wedding next weekend to Granny’s Alzhimer’s that set in last year, the struggling to make ends meet, the sparse winter, the low rain, the alcohol dependency, the jealousy and anger, Mac’s decision to try and sell the farm, that awful idea to have the baby killed… the suicide note hopefully still hidden under my mattress.             I don’t know when I started crying or when he took hold of me, but by the time I was done, I didn’t particularly care.             “Ah was gonna do it, too, ya know? If ya hadn’t stopped me when ya did, Ah—” I sniffed “—Ah was ready ta go through with it. Ah was so… so numb ta everythin’, Ah figured it’d be better if we just went off together. Ah grew up without parents; Ah didn’t want ta do that ta him! He didn’t deserve it! It wasn’t his fault; it was mine! Conceived with the bad luck of me as his mother!”             Fin held me tighter. In a way, it was nostalgic. The last time a stallion held me like this was years and years ago. Before the fire… “Hey, come on now. Nopony said you’d end up a bad mother.”             But I pushed away. “How could Ah have ever been a good mother ta bring somepony inta the world with a broken family and no way ta feed ‘em?”             Fin straightened his lips. “Look. Maybe this is just me being outside of what you’re going through here, but have you really thought about it? What it would be like?”             That, for a moment, had a calming effect. I wiped at my eyes and was still. Have I thought about what it would be like? Well, it’d be just like tryin’ ta raise Applebloom all over again, wouldn’t it? But without Pa or Granny ta help. Fer what few years we still had him, anyways.             I shook my head. “Oh, no, Ah know how this goes down. Mac goes off with his new wife ta somewhere else, Ah have ta raise the foal, take care of Granny, and work the orchard all at the same time, and Ah couldn’t even do all the work on my own before! Ah—”             Fin put a hoof on my lips. With the way it was positioned, it forced me to look at his face and focus on his eyes. Sunset orange, clear, concerned, calm. “Stop. Breathe. Take a minute.”             Begrudgingly, I did take a breath. Again, calmed down a little.             “So, I’m beginning to see that you tend to look at things in the worst possible way they could go,” Fin began. “You like your caution, you like to game out your scenarios before they happen. That’s fine. But, there’s one thing you mentioned earlier that you haven’t talked about at all when it comes to your future with our baby. Do you… see what I’m getting at?”             I didn’t, really. Out of all that, all I heard was, ‘our baby,’ which, if I’m honest, probably made my day. A stallion who didn’t care wouldn’t say that, which said a lot more about him than anything else thus far. Trying to fight the fluttering in my stomach, I said, “Well, no, Ah don’t think Ah do.”             He nodded. “When we were walking here you said you had ‘a friend’ no less than three times within half an hour, and you told me you had a personal relationship with all the princesses. I have a question for you; have you told anypony else what you told me just now?”             I bit my lip. “Well…”             “Right. Have you attempted to go to anypony else about any of this?”             “…Ah had my reasons not ta.”             Fin brought his hooves together and held them in front of his snout, taking in a sharp breath. “You were suicidal and thought there were reasons left to not talk to anypony about this?”             I looked away from him. Even if Pinkie was the only pony left, Ah should’ve at least tried ta talk ta somepony. How many times do I have to learn this lesson?             “So… my head hasn’t been clear. Not thinkin’ straight about anythin’, gettin’ worked up over everythin’.”             “Oh, I know. You think yourself in circles when you see no hope, and you spiral around like a coin in a funnel until you hit the lowest point, and bam! You turn it all off. That one attempt to reach out didn’t work, so what hope left is there? None, that’s what.”             Fin sighed and leaned back. He was silent for a moment as he looked up to the window at the top of the barn. Well, come on now. Don’t just leave me hangin’ here.  Finally, he looked back my way and relief washed over me. “So, what’s the plan? Do you have a plan?”             Nothing came to mind. “Ah don’t know. Ah thought Ah was gonna be dead by now. Tomorrow is beyond me.”             “As it is for everypony.” Fin looked up at the roof, and Ah could see the gears turning in that head of his.             For my part, I really should tell somepony. If he’s still serving, I know he can’t just get out of it to come help me. I suppose I could legally make demands of him, but that’s… He’s not a bad guy. That just doesn’t feel right. What is right is that I have friends and I can get help. I know I need it, but I was… being stubborn again. I don’t have it in me to let go of control, to give somepony else my burdens, to ask for help. How many times, Applejack? You let it go too far this time. Will it be the last time? The first time we needed extra help when Mac went and hurt himself, you worked yourself half to death before you asked for it. Ya knew who to go to and where to get it the second time. You relied on them, then they relied on you, so now you can’t ask anymore? Is this the last time, are you really so set in your ways?             “I was sent overseas on my first deployment.”             I wasn’t quite sure what he was on about now, but figured I didn’t have any reason to not listen. He hadn’t turned his head back to me, he was still lost up there in the roof. Whatever this was, it was important to him, so I leaned in.             “Some places aren’t as nice as Equestria. Not so civilized, not so peaceful. There’s certainly been a chaotic streak in the last few years, but that’s unusual for us. It’s not so unusual elsewhere. Away from Equestria, ponies are sometimes considered a commodity. Less than other creatures. Inferior.             “Under Princess Celestia’s sun, there’s much that we don’t have to see, much that we don’t have to deal with. Outside of it, the world is a much crueler place. We try to help creatures who have common cause with us, other herbivore types who believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.             “We try, anyways.”             Finally free of the ceiling’s grip, Fin’s eyes sank deep into the hay. “I had my own friend. We met in the academy since I wasn’t worth much in school and because my cutiemark isn’t exactly pleasant when ponies know what it means. Have you looked at it?”             He turned to show it to me, but I couldn’t quite make it out. It almost looked like a smiling mouth with silver in the middle.             “What is it?”             He looked away and sat back against the barn wall. “The silver tongue.”             That… doesn’t sound honest. “Like—”             “Yes.” Fin picked up some straw and started to fiddle with it. “If I really wanted to, I could tell anypony what they wanted to hear. Got me into a lot of trouble in school, did some things I’m not proud of back in my teens. My dad had to bail me out of juvie because I talked the jewels off a rich old mare. In my defense, she did give them to me, but I lied through my teeth, knowing she’d believe it and I could make a quick bit off her stuff.             “That was the day he decided my career path. ‘Rotten little motherless shits like you need to be beaten into shape! So that’s what you’re getting: a one-way ticket to Fort Cantermore Academy.’ Out of high school and into high water, so to speak.”             “Oh… Are ya still in the service because, back home—”             He waved it away. “No, no. Dad and I are on good terms now. He was right; that was what I needed. However, what I got was much, much more than anypony needs.” He paused,  let his eyes wander back to the ceiling, seeing a far-off memory up there. “His name was Black Streak. A talent that made him good at hiding. If he wanted to disappear, you wouldn’t find him. A short fuse, but an honorable guy. I used to make fun of him for being so ‘righteous’ about everything.: No play-pony mags, no alcohol, no cigars, and, certainly, no fun. An absolute stick in the mud. He could have easily ended up like me. A kid with the ability to take advantage of his talents to steal and cheat others. But he wasn’t. It was just that temper, ya see. He’d defend anypony’s honor for ‘em, which often got him in fights. Noble idiot, that’s what he was. Getting beat up or beating the piss out of somepony just because of an offhoof comment.”             He laughed, though it was strained compared to how he’d done it before. “That was how we met, actually. He picked a fight with me because I said something about his mane. True to his name, his mane had a dark spot that ran down the middle. With the flat top cut, he looked like a dirty paintbrush, and I told him that to his face. We fought, I didn’t win, but we were both put into confinement with each other for it. ‘You are soldiers! Brothers in arms! Get it together or go home! We don’t need boys in the army,’ the Sergeant said. And so we did. I talked to him, got enough information to figure out how to behave around him, and we got along after that. I didn’t really start enjoying his company till I realized that he was easy to fool, but I was… naïve back then.             “I didn’t understand what it was that changed how I looked at Black Streak. He went from the fool to the hero in my eyes, but I didn’t know why. He became less of a pony for me to use and more of a real friend. Somepony I could truly put my trust in. Before I knew it, he understood me better than I him.”             I nodded. “Mmhmm. Ah’ve made that mistake with a certain fashionista Ah know.”             He sighed, a deep, sorrowful sigh. “You should treasure the relationship you have with her. You never know when you’ll see her for the last time.”             That cuts a little deeper than it needs to. Good Goddess, today, I almost…             “We were in the deep jungle of the south-eastern continent,” he continued. “Trees as far as you could see, a canopy so high that you might find a cloud city or two underneath it. Ponies and zebras have a stable relationship, but the zebras don’t have the same kind of magic we do, and ours is easier to defend ourselves with.”             Fin grabbed a few more straws and held them up together. “In exchange for goods and raw materials, Equestria provides medicine and soldiers. Zebras are targets for the Abyssinians that live over there with them. Slave labor, fresh meat. It’s not an easy life, living next to a people who want to consume you.” He took all the straws in both hooves and ripped them in half.             “Oh no…” I figured out where the story was going.             “Oh yes. Everypony else in my regiment. Nopony came home but me. Including Black Streak.”             “Good Goddess… Ah had no idea…”             He shrugged. “Course you didn’t. That’s why we exist. Between us and the Princesses, there’s little in the world that could stand a chance. The worst you have to deal with on our continent are the diamond dogs, and they’re so reliant on Equestria that they might as well be a satellite state. But that’s at home. It’s a big world out there, and there’s more in it than just ponies and creatures like us. Not all of them are herbivores, either.”             He leaned forward, crossed his hindlegs, put his elbows on his knees, and clasped his forehooves in front of his snout.             “At any point in the day in the borders of Zebra territory, it can be very dark. Canopy cover, fog, steam—anything can stop sunlight in the right place, and it can be random when it’s there too. Abyssinians have a keener sense of smell than we do, and they’re better at hiding. They come in more natural colors; none of them are lime green or bright pink. They blend well into the forest.             “They don’t need weapons to kill you, either. They are weapons.”             He shuddered, his forelegs crossed his chest and his hooves found his shoulders, really lost somewhere else now. “Claws that rip the hide clean off a stallion with a well-placed swipe, teeth that dig into your neck and jaws that crush your bones. Dense, stone-like muscle, strength to tear through trees. They’re giants, monsters twice our size. You thank the Goddess every day that they aren’t magical species too.             “We were warned. Too many of us were young and dumb and cocky. My infectious talk of pride and Black Streak’s call for vengeance for the village’s lost stallions. Honor was his thing, remember? Equestria defends this place for its bananas and wood more than the zebra population there. That just so happens to be in our mutual interest. It isn’t that noble, it isn’t that justified, and with the way… with the way they attack, it just isn’t worth it.”             I could swear he was practically shaking now. “We went too far beyond the border into Abyssinia. A hunting party had us spotted immediately, and all they did was lead us deeper into the lion’s den, quite literally. Surrounded by a larger force, on their turf, with a bunch of stupid young stallions just itching to put that thirst for blood to work. Good Goddess, did we get it. They came at us from all sides, taking swipes and potshots at our formation. One pony gets too far out, he’s dead the next instant. Stallions lose their cool, go off and do something stupid, only to be the next victim. Death after death, we’d only manage to scratch them before somepony else was ripped to pieces. I was still alive because Black Streak was a unicorn. He…”             Fin paused. Swallowed. “He’d been protecting me the whole time. He wasn’t Shining Armor; he couldn’t make a shield that could fend these things off like they were nothing. All he was really good for was hiding, and you know what? He hated that. He used his personal spell on me and told me to run. He could only keep it up for so long. We’d lost most of our group now, but somepony had to go back and report. Somepony had to live to tell the tale. He wasn’t going to last much longer and our commander agreed with him. I was good at running. Fastest in the group, especially since we’d lost all our pegasi by then.”             Hooves shaking, eyes glossing over, Fin continued, “I didn’t hesitate. I left them for dead. I ran as fast as I could, told the pony in charge what had happened, and in a week, that part of the jungle was burned to cinders. Not even the bones were left. We’re her little ponies. The price for blood is blood. And if you offend the Princess of the sun like that…” The muscles in his forelegs tightened. “The invoice will be paid.”             I’d… never truly seen Celestia angry. She always seemed to be in control, even if we didn’t realize it. I remember Twilight told me something about the history we know to not be quite as clean or as accurate as it’d actually happened, but…             “I was sent home after that. I wouldn’t, couldn’t sleep for days. They were still there, waiting in the dark, you see. If I closed my eyes, they’d get me. If I dreamed, they start pulling me apart just like everypony else. Skin me alive just for the fun of it. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night in pools of my own sweat, screaming about the trees and the blood and the cats. After a while, they decided that I wasn’t fit to sleep in barracks, so they made a room out of one of the cells just so I wouldn’t disturb the other soldiers. Day after day after day, night after night after sleepless night, I was hardly even sentient half the time. The mental and physical exhaustion would take its toll on me eventually and force my body to shut down, to go without entering my nightmares again, but it never lasted more than a day. “Eventually, it got so bad that they started giving me drugs. I couldn’t sleep if I dreamed, so all I needed was dreamless sleep. It didn’t always work though. And when I couldn’t get the drugs while traveling to different facilities across the nation, I found that heavy drinking had a similar effect. I… wouldn’t be too surprised if I was a bit of an alcoholic too, these days.”             Oh, Goddess. No wonder he looked so miserable at the bar. How long has he been dealing with this? Weeks, months, years, even? Without thinking, I reached out and put my hoof on his back. “Ya poor thing…” He wasn’t a small stallion. The opposite, in fact. If he were taller, he could probably give Mac a run for his money. But in all this time, he looked to me like a colt in desperate need of a mother. Somepony. Anypony. Even me.             Fin stopped trembling, gave me a slight smile, but he was in the memory’s clutches and went right back in. “In an effort to help me recover, they had me spend my days working in the training room. Exercising with new equipment, used as a body to see how well it performed. Anything to take the nightmares away, to forget.”             He shivered again. “I was only on the south east continent for a year, but I never really left until recently.”             I furrowed my brows. A pony who tells a story like that isn’t, but I hesitated to ask, “Ya… are ya okay now?”             Fin looked at me long and hard. Then, he relaxed. Muscles disengaged, the rigidity in his legs loosened, his shoulders dropped. It might’ve been a twitch, but even his lips curled up a bit. “I mean, I am talking about it, right? I haven’t screamed, I haven’t curled up and hid thus far, so I think so.” A pained laugh followed by a hard smile. “No, but really, I think I have recovered. At least, more so than I had in the past year.”             Fin leaned back and put his forelegs behind his head. “I tried to do it too, ya know.” He turned his eyes at me, mutual sincerity and dark regret deep in them. “Kill myself.”             Emotionless breath left me. “Ah suppose Ah could imagine why.” The survivor’s guilt must’ve been unbearable. It would’ve been more surprising if he didn’t, really.             “You’d be right. When they did find me screaming, it was often ‘Black Streak.’ I’d run through the names of all the ponies I’d lost, wake up in empty rooms searching for long dead brothers in arms, ask why I had to be the one to live. Why me? Why was it only me? Couldn’t he have run instead? Logically, they could’ve found him through smell even if he hid with his spell, but my frantic mind didn’t care about that.  “Eventually, I got the idea that I could end the nightmares myself. They couldn’t get me if I got me, right? No more bad dreams, no more jumping at shadows, no more waking up in the night, screaming about the cats tearing me apart. I got caught with a crossbow once and was not allowed out of my therapist’s sight from then on.”             When we get done here, I’m gonna go find that thing and lock it in a chest then throw it in the storm cellar, never to be seen again.             “I was… on the brink. At the edge, very willing to jump off, but held onto by a watchful pair of hooves. Somepony must’ve made a complaint, though, because, one night, I was visited by Princess Luna. Do you know what she said to me?”             Save for that Nightmare Night she visited, I hadn’t had many dealings with Luna since her reform. “Ah… really couldn’t guess.”             This time, he smiled, and it was real. Easy, genuine. Almost nostalgic. “‘If this is what you were going to do with it, what did your friends give up their lives for? If you will not use it, why did they die instead of you? Is that how you repay a debt? You survived for a reason, so find it, Mr. Sharp. Do not solve a temporary problem with a permanent solution. You never know what you might find just around the corner.’”             Bitterness filled my heart. Good Goddess, Applejack. What have you been doing?             “For the longest time, I didn’t know what to do with myself. But her words, the image of Black Streak telling me that he didn’t die for me just so I could throw my life away kept me sane. The nightmares became less frequent, I didn’t need aides to sleep, and I was almost a functioning pony. Almost.             “See, I’d gotten pretty strong working with all the equipment, and I still jumped at shadows. Ponies learned quick not to sneak up on me.” Fin laughed, for real this time. “My poor therapist, you can’t count how many times I accidentally bucked him across a room before he got the message. He’s a good guy, that Calm Mind, but he’s not so quick on the uptake, ya know? However, that’s not what truly got me out of the jungle.”             I raised a brow. “It… didn’t?”             He shook his head. “Nope. Something else entirely did. Something that took me by surprise harder than any cat in the dark corners of my mind ever could.”             Again, I picked up where he was going with this. He did tell me what that cutiemark of his means. Of all the ponies in the world, he may be one of the few that could get away with lying to the Element of Honesty. I didn’t have any reason to think he was, but the thought was in my head. Buried deep, deep under another feeling that heated my cheeks and took me all the way up from the depths I’d been drowning in to sitting on cloud nine.             “…Ah bet Ah can guess what that was.”             Nodding, he smiled at me, putting a new warmth in my chest. “And again, you’d be right. I really did try dating. Calm Mind told me it could help ease my nerves, being with somepony else. Hooked up a few times, met some good mares with promising futures, but none of them ever scared the cats away. They couldn’t handle how skittish I was at night, and I hurt a few of them too. It wouldn’t last. I never thought anypony would. I was doomed to this life of solitude. I was still so afraid of not being alone in the dark that nopony could ever stay with me. “Of course…” He tilted his chin. “That was until somepony asked me what I had to be so sad about. Told me that drunk ponies happy were better than sad ponies sober. A good cider in hoof; what’s there to cry about? It ‘ain’t’ so bad when you’re not drinking alone.”             Now I was almost embarrassed. Talk about cheesy pickup lines. And here I thought what he opened with this morning was bad.             “And then, suddenly, there was little else on my mind but her. I couldn’t see phantoms in the shadows anymore. I didn’t have trouble sleeping, and as a matter of fact, I started to dream about the night I met the mare with the golden hair and the emerald eyes.”             Fin stood up, brushed the hay off himself, then offered me a hoof. If this was an act, he was one hell of an actor. I took the hoof, he helped me stand, then brought me close, less than an inch between my snout and his.             “I think—and this is just conjecture, of course—that maybe it wasn’t happenstance that brought us together that night. Fate, destiny, divine intervention, what have you, I survived for a reason, and I think that reason was that night two months ago and finding you again this morning. You, the baby you’re carrying. Those are my reasons.”             Now it was my turn to have the glossy eyes. This isn’t real, is it? This isn’t happening, is it? He couldn’t be about to say what I think he is, is he? But of course, that’s what he said he came here for this morning, and he didn’t know then what he does now.             Fin Sharp, the stallion I met two months ago, the stallion I have only really known for a day, went down on one knee. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. This isn’t how I imagined it’d be, but really, I wasn’t sure this moment would ever come me. Maybe it could’ve been different, or better, or fancier, but… I doubt there was anything else in the world that could’ve made me feel like this.             “Miss Applejack,” Fin began, “will you be my reason to live?”             I sniffed. Wiped at my eyes. Tried my damndest to fight down the sheer joy that was bubbling up in my heart. This doesn’t happen to ponies. This doesn’t happen in anything outside a fairytale. But… if this is real… how could I ever turn down a stallion like this? This is what it feels like, ain’t it? Those raunchy stories that Rarity reads, when those stallions finally say the words the protagonists want to hear. Can I be so certain that this is right? That this is it, that this is the future, for all three of us?             “Are ya sure this is what ya want? Ya’d have ta be an Apple. It’s hard work, this life. We ain’t doin’ well right now, and Ah… Ah don’t know if it’ll ever get better, especially with him on the way.”             His forward gaze was unphased, his hoof only tightened on mine. “My dear Applejack, did you know that I am the lone survivor of the 11th Regiment of Light Dragoons? A foal to raise and an orchard to work is hardly being sent back into the jungle. With you at my side, I can’t see how anything won’t get better.”             Snuffing the tears and letting the joy out at least a little, I shook my head. “Ah’ve said it once, Ah’ll say it again: ya sure are a smooth-talker, Ah tell ya what. Ah need two things before Ah tell ya what ya want ta hear, alright?”             “Anything you ask, anything at all.”             I took a shuddering breath and swallowed. As much as I want to let this be, he has to know what he’s getting into. We can’t end up like Mac and Cheerilee. This has to work, if only for his sake. “The first is just a simple promise. No matter what happens, we go down with the orchard if it comes ta pass. Ah’m not sure Ah communicated it well, but this is my home, and it’s been my family’s home fer generations goin’ all the way back ta the foundin’ of this country. This land belongs ta the Apple family, and it stays that way, forever if we can help it.”             “I’ll swear my life on it!”             I stomped a hoof, “No, ya won’t!” He jerked back a bit but didn’t let go. “That’s the other thing, Fin; nopony dies over somethin’ stupid! We’re still young, and the foals that come from us are gonna be just as stubborn, reckless, hot-blooded, and stupid as we are. We’ll tell each other about anythin’ and everythin’, and we always stay together. No more depressive episodes, no more spiralin’ down ta that dark place, and never, ever, are ya allowed ta leave me!”             Then I thought better of it. “Well, that last part was in the heat of the moment, it ain’t realistic fer me ta—”             “I said anything, didn’t I?” He stood up and closed the distance. Before I knew it, I could feel the heat of his breath. “I can’t make that promise right now but once things settle down and I’m here to stay? I’ll make it. Seal it with a kiss, maybe even an ‘I do,’ and I’ll have it framed in gold around your neck. How does… that sound?”             I giggled but didn’t look away from those sunset eyes of his. “Ah remember somethin’ about tellin’ ponies exactly what they wanted ta hear. Don’t’cha know Ah only wanted a one-word answer?”             Fin laughed deep and sweet, something closer to how it would sound if he really meant it. “Yes,” And then he leaned in.