//------------------------------// // IV: Anger // Story: Six Stages of Grief // by mushroompone //------------------------------// I think I mentioned that, after my parents died, I was pretty much all anger. I get anger. Anger is a reaction that is as honest as it is active, and as aggressive as it is vulnerable. I've gotten a lot of things accomplished with anger. Sometimes a spiteful fury is the only fuel you need. The bad thing about anger (which shouldn't be a surprise) is that it hurts ponies. Ponies other than you. I hurt my brother.  I hit him. A lot. And I still feel badly about that. Who wouldn't? He took it, given the circumstances. I think he would've felt guilty not taking it. That's what grief does to you—it makes you feel guilty for not taking abuse from your loved ones. Makes you feel like you have to be the outlet for the feelings that ain’t your fault. Anyway. After a while of taking it, Mac was fed up, but he didn't feel like he could push back at all. Not with words, and certainly not with hooves. So he took me outside, sat me in front of an apple tree, and he told me to buck. I did. I bucked apple trees until I could hardly feel my legs. Woke up the next morning feeling like I'd gone ten rounds with a pack of timberwolves only to get run over by a train, but it got it out of me. It used up the anger and left me with a big empty nothing. Nothing was preferable. I could tell anger was on the horizon for Pinkie. Before you get well and truly angry, you wind yourself up like a spring, and boy howdy was she wound up but good. It was an invisible thing, easy to miss, but I knew her. I thought I did, anyway. I was trying to know her better. Let’s put it that way. The point is, I saw the signs of a great, big, angry blow-out a-coming, and I decided it would be for the best if I got Pinkie out of the house for a while. Took her out to the fields. Got her in a position to smash rocks or whatever it is that needed doing out here anyway. The fact that she even agreed told me everything I needed to know about her mental state. Pinkie tied her hair up with a ribbon and slipped a blue bandana over her forehead. I didn’t even know she owned a bandana. I guess she meant for it to keep the flyaways out of her face. We got to work early. Before-the-sun early, when all farmwork should be done. It was still hot, though. A lingering heat that bled up from the ground. Pinkie walked me through the rock fields, and I had the creeping feeling of being someplace completely and entirely dead. It wasn’t like walking through the orchards early in the morning, where you have the nagging fear that something will jump out and get you—it was just empty. Completely barren, completely flat. Drier than the dictionary. No temperature at all in the air, and a steady baked heat rising from the ground. “Summer is corundum season,” Pinkie told me. Her saddlebags smacked her sides in a steady rhythm as she trotted up ahead of me. I looked up. I’d been staring at my hooves. “Oh yeah?” Pinkie looked over her shoulder at me. “Yeah. Rubies and sapphires,” she explained. “We need to plant some aluminum and aerate the soil.” I could hear the Maud in her. “I… see,” I said. “Do you know how to split rock?” Pinkie asked. I blinked. “I don’t reckon I do,” I admitted. “Unless it’s anything like bucking apples.” She didn’t laugh. “Eh… not really,” she said. “That’s okay. I can do it.” I nodded. “I think that’s for the best. You just point me to the aluminum and I’ll get to planting, okay?” “Okay,” she agreed. Her pace slowed, and her saddlebags stopped slapping against her flanks. She took a turn to the right and started fussing with the rusty old latch on a wooden gate. The gate led into a field that, at least in the dark, appeared exactly the same as all the fields surrounding it.  I don’t think that light would have made a difference. Pinkie slipped her saddlebags off her back and pawed through the left pouch. I watched, eyes wide and bleary in the early-morning darkness, as she took out a few little sacks and piled them up at my hooves. “This one is aluminum,” she said, pushing me a little brown rucksack. “I’ll split the rock, and you drop the beads in.” I peered down into the bag. I was pretty sure these were just little balls of aluminum foil, but I didn’t say nothing about it. “How far apart?” I asked. “Three inches? Four?” “Doesn’t really matter,” Pinkie said as she loaded everything back into her bags. She gave her bags a kick, and they skidded away. For a moment, she thought. Remembering, probably. Her eyes scanned the surface of the rock with purpose—somehow, some way, she knew what she was looking for. She swept the area clear (of what, I don’t know) with her silky tail, and turned to me. “Stand back,” she instructed. Stand back? “Jackie.” “Stand back. Got it.” I scrambled backwards a few steps. Pinkie seemed satisfied. She looked back down at the ground, moving her hooves slowly over the surface of the dusty, rocky earth. Almost like she was looking for something. A pin or a button. After a bit of that, she switched to tapping, her ears pricked like she was listening for something. An echo? I’ve no earthly idea. She was deep in concentration. Deeper than I’d seen her before. The shell-pink tip of her tongue crept out the corner of her mouth as she chased a feeling I couldn’t understand. Tapping turned to stomping. Just her front hooves. One at a time, then together. Like a fox pouncing a shrew. And then, in an explosive grunting and cracking, she stomped as hard as she could, and the rock split. Clean open. In the blink of an eye. I’d never seen her do that before. She looked up at me, panting as she caught her breath. The look in her eyes had changed. I saw a glint of something that, at least for Pinkie, was unfamiliar. Dark and sharp. Pleased with herself in the wake of the destruction she caused. “In there,” she said simply, breathlessly, pointing to the crevice. “I-I got it,” I whispered. Pinkie nodded. She turned, walked a few paces, and got to work on a second row. I spilled some of the little beads of aluminum into the crevice, and they vanished. It was so dark out, and the crevice was so thin and deep, that I thought they may have tumbled all the way down to the center of the planet. Swallowed up completely by the void Pinkie had opened. “So, uh…” I cleared my throat. “How long has it been since you did this?” Pinkie didn’t look up. “I dunno,” she said. “A while.” I chewed my lip. “Did you help out when you were younger?” Pinkie sighed. “Not a lot. I didn’t really like it,” she told me. It was the sort of thing that should have been said with a twist of laughter, but her voice was entirely even. “I should’ve, though.” Yeah. Familiar. Pinkie slammed her hooves into the ground again. Opening another chasm. Another concussive sound that echoed across the plains. I coughed. “I remember feeling that way,” I said softly. “After my parents… but, y’know, once I started working the farm, it was like it was my way to be close to ‘em. Even though I hadn’t really been old enough to do it before they, uh… before they died.” Pinkie grunted. It wasn’t exactly dismissive, but it also wasn’t exactly warm. “You’re good at it,” I said, hope in my voice. “Rock-breaking. Or however you called it.” “Splitting,” Pinkie corrected. “Yeah. Rock-splitting.” She didn’t say anything. Just brought her hooves down on the ground with all her might, unleashing a yell along with it that shook me even more than the impact. Then she shook it off. Like it was nothing. “They found my parents,” she said. And I’ll never forget how she said it. This little, chip-on-the-shoulder, brushing it off way. On an upswing. Like she was getting ready to ask a question, only to realize halfway through that she understood perfectly. I think I made a sound. A stutter or something. “It was a bear after all,” she continued, her eyes only ever fixed on the ground. “It got both of them.” I stuttered again. “When did—h-how did—” “Late last night!” Pinkie said, with surprise bordering on furious disbelief. “After we went to bed. And I couldn’t sleep and I heard…” She trailed off. She stared at the ground. She wasn’t crying, which I think scared me the most. “The police came, and Maud went to identify the…” The bodies. “I think I knew,” she said. “Somewhere. I just didn’t want to admit it. But it feels weird now because… I dunno. I feel weird.” I wanted to say ‘it’s okay to feel weird, it’s a weird thing’. I wanted to say ‘it’s okay to be relieved that it’s all over’. I wanted to say something. Anything at all. But it was all jammed up in my throat like peanut butter. “I heard them talking about it.” Pinkie kicked at the ground, like she was kicking a can. “You know what they said?” I blinked. “Uh…” She looked up at me. Sudden. A snap. “Limestone said ‘let’s not tell Pinkie Pie, she isn’t ready to hear this,’ and Maud said ‘keep your voice down or she’ll hear you,’ and even Marble was down there crying.” Spitting. Venomous. “Even my little sister is treating me like a baby. Like I can’t handle it.” I shook my head. “That’s not what they think,” I said. It was a reflex—I didn’t believe it. “It is!” Pinkie yelled. Her voice was strained and high, like she was being choked. “It’s exactly what they think! And they’re—they’re such hypocrites, because they’re losing it, too!” I bit my lip. I didn’t say anything. Pinkie stomped hard on the ground, then paced off to one side. “I know Limestone’s been hurting herself with the farmwork, and Marble cries herself to sleep every night—most nights she has to go throw up out her window she’s crying so hard—and Maud is just… it’s like she’s not even there!” Screaming. Raw and loud and squeaking and breaking. She pounded the ground again. Let loose another wordless howl as the ground split under her. “Pinkie…” I said softly. “Let’s just—” “There’s no let’s!” Pinkie yelled back, pointing her hoof accusingly at me. “There’s no let’s, we’re not doing this together! Everypony is doing it alone because they feel like they have to protect me, because—because I’m the only one of us who’s ever even happy!” She let loose with both rear hooves, kicking up a cloud of dust and a spray of gravel. “I’m always happy!” she yelled. “Do you know how hard that is, Jackie?” I swallowed. “N-no.” “I’m always happy—I’m the happy one!” she waved a hoof in the air, rolling her eyes at the idea. “I always keep everyone together. I always swoop in and cheer everyone up. I’m always nice, and I always explain my sisters to everyone else—oh, this is Limestone, she has anger issues! I know Maud’s too honest, it’s just how she is! Marble looked you right in the eye before running away? That means she likes you!” She gnashed her teeth as she took another swipe at the ground. “And then I—I let myself be sad, and I let myself feel my feelings, and that’s so hard!”  Her voice broke. “It’s so hard.” She stomped again. “And they treat me like this. They don’t tell me my parents are dead.” It was the first time she said it. I knew that for sure. “It’s not fair.” “I-I know,” I said. She sniffled. “It’s not fair. How they treat me.” “I know it, sugar cube.” She sat down. She looked at the dusty rock between her hooves, spiderwebbed with cracks. She sniffled again. “Why am I like this?” she whispered. My mouth hung open, wordless, like a damn trout. “Why are you—” “Why do I have to be happy all the time?” Pinkie asked. “Why can’t I be sad and be okay? Why can’t I just… be okay?” Her face crumpled. A deep, total crumple. Like a used-up tissue. Or a wrinkled-up coat. Like something grabbed and mashed and tossed aside. She started to cry. And I just stood there. I just looked at her and watched her cry because I didn’t know what to say. It felt like all the words I’d ever said or ever thought of saying were caught in a knot on the back of my tongue, and if I tried to say one they’d all come out in a nasty meaningless hairball. She cried. Then she hit the ground. Sudden. Sharp. One hoof. Not to work. Just to do it—just to hit something. And the look in her eyes changed. She hit the ground again. An experiment. And the floodgates opened. Pinkie sent a flurry of loose, formless punches at the earth, one right after another, no time to properly take the impact or hold back the power or even feel what it was doing to her. She just punched. And cried. And yelled wordless, meaningless yells that disappeared into the wide-open fields. Swallowed by the sky. Rocks flew. The earth crumbled away. She was bleeding. And, when I saw the blood, I ran to her side before I could think whether it was a good idea. I grabbed her from behind and pulled her away. Her hooves kept pedaling for a moment, and she fought me, reaching for the ground. A strangled argument may have squeaked out of her before I sat down hard on the rock with her up in the air. She was small. I never thought of her as small, but here I was holding her as she squirmed against me, tried to get away, and she was small. “I just—” “It’s alright, now,” I said softly. “I’m not gonna let you hurt yourself. It’s alright.” She blubbered something else. Then she stopped fighting. Pinkie went limp in my arms. She squirmed again, and I let her spin around and bury herself in my chest. I held her. She shook like a leaf and she rubbed her face deep in my coarse fur, matting it all with snot and tears and spit, crying and grabbing me and shaking me back. Pawing at me for something to hold onto. Squeezing too hard because she hurt, and she needed me to hurt too, and all I could do was stand resolute and squeeze her back. “Why am I like this?” she said. Again and again. “Why, Jackie? Why am I like this?” “‘Cause you’re stubborn.” I pulled the silky locks of her mane away from her face, through the tracks of tears that cut down her cheeks. “Just like me.” She kept on crying. “You’re too stubborn to not be happy,” I said. “You’ll be happy when everyone else has given up on it, just because you can’t stand to be any other way.” She wiped her face on me. “Doesn’t that make me stupid?” “No!” I shook my head. “No, no, no. Never.” “But—” “Never,” I said. “I… I love that about you, Pinkie.” She sorta stiffened. “Yeah?” “Yeah.” I squeezed her a little tighter. “I do. ‘Cause I can be real pessimistic, y’know. It’s a problem of mine. I need a little sunshine now and then. Or… more like all the time, I think.” She made a sound. Might have been a laugh. Good enough for me. My hooves fell to her withers. I could still feel her shaking, there, and tried to hold her still. Tried to… I don’t know. Hold her together, I guess. With little strokes in little circles. I don’t think it really worked, but I could feel her falling into me harder and harder. “I know it hurts,” I said. She swallowed. A thick, wet sound. “Yeah?” “Yeah,” I said. “With the… the sibling stuff. I remember being so mad at Mac because he was the one to—well. Not that it matters.” Pinkie pulled away. “The one to what?” I looked away. “Uh. Nothin’. Just… y’know, it was hard on me, too. When my parents died,” I said softly. “I was angry at everyone and I took it out on Mac.” Pinkie blinked. “Because he… he did something?” Consarn it. “It’s not—” I cut myself off. “N-no. He didn’t do anything wrong.” Not technically a lie. “But he did do something?” Consarn it. I let out a tense sigh. “Pinkie…” “What happened?” Pinkie asked. “All the time we’ve been friends… you’ve never talked about what happened to your parents before.” She pulled away completely, wiping at her face with one hoof. The distraction, however unintentional, had stopped her crying almost completely. She just stared at me, now. That doe-eyed, blank look that I realized now was the absence of anything and everything. The look she gave when she couldn’t smile, and didn’t know how else to be. I tried to sigh, but it came out a bit of a growl. “It’s… not a time I’m proud of,” I said softly. “So I don’t like to talk about it.” Pinkie didn’t even say it. She just looked at me. Her face was caked in tears. Her mane silky and thin, like my Granny’s, floating around her face. I’m not proud, either. I sucked in a sharp breath. “My mama got sick when I was five. Terminal. Not sure we ever found out what it really was. If we did… well, my Granny don’t exactly like talking about it.” I reached up to scratch at the side of my face. “She was bedridden in a month. Coma in two.” Pinkie’s face started to melt again, but she stayed quiet. Her eyes glassy. Her lips thin and taut. “We kept her alive for a while. A year. Even though she was probably in a lot of pain, and we… we pretty much knew she wasn’t gonna turn around.” I pulled my hat off my head and held it to my chest. “It was… it was actually my dad who fought so hard for her to stay on life support. He didn’t really do much other than sit by her side. He was heartbroken.” I felt the word leave my mouth, and right away it left a bad taste. “No. He wasn’t heartbroken—I mean, he was, but he was depressed. That was the big fish, y’know? He was depressed. And he didn’t get help. He just…” I swallowed. “I dunno how long he was thinking about doing what he did, but I think watching his wife waste away was too much for him. And rather than do the humane thing and pull the plug, or help his three kids through the hardest possible thing, he went and made it even harder.” I felt the heat in my cheeks. I crumpled the hat between my hooves. “Applejack, I—” “He shot himself.” It was the first time I’d ever said those words, and they felt ugly and wrong in my mouth. Yet they came out again: “He shot himself. In the barn. With the shotgun we used to scare off timberwolves.” Pinkie put a hoof to her lips. I took a few hard breaths. Heavy and tight and hot. “Granny found him. Had a heart attack.” I sniffled. “Big Mac took me ‘n’ Bloom in the next morning to say goodbye to our mom before they pulled the plug.” Pinkie’s lip quivered. “I was just a foal, so I blamed him. For years I blamed him and beat up on him,” I said. “I thought he did it. I thought he decided it was time. I didn’t understand that it costs money and… well, y’know. All that. Wasn’t ‘til I was his age that I was sure they wouldn’t let him make that choice. The things you think your big brother can do…” I shook my head. It was almost a nice memory. Almost a wish to be that innocent, to see the world that black and white. “All I’m trying to say is… well, I dunno what I’m trying to say,” I admitted. “Just that I’m here for you, I guess. If you want more’n that, you’ll have to dig it up yourself.” Pinkie looked at me. A long, pained look that was more than just the emptiness she'd been stuck with lately. After a long moment, she fell forward and hugged me again. Tight. Legs pinned to my sides. Not quite as tight as usual. But still tight. I wheezed softly. "It's alright, now. Been a while since all that. I got through it." Pinkie sighed into my mane. "You were mad?" I scoffed. "Boy howdy, was I mad. I was mad at everyone and everything." "So… it's okay for me to be mad?" Pinkie asked. "Even at my sisters?" "Of course it is." I nodded and patted her on the back. "Just don't beat up on 'em too hard. That's what I'm here for, okay? They're grieving too. They're making mistakes too." I felt Pinkie's jaw clench and unclench. Her head rocked from side to side against my neck. "Okay," she said at last. "Okay," I agreed. "Could we keep working, then?" Pinkie asked. I looked to my left and saw that the sun was beginning to creep over the horizon. Those early rays, tiny as they seemed, were still powerful enough to start me sweating. Nowhere to hide from that sun out here. Ah, well. "I think that's a swell idea." I should have known better. Pinkie’s not stupid. It’s the last thing I’d call her. Rainbow Dash, maybe—stupid and reckless. Twilight sure can act stupid when she gets herself all tied up in nonsense. But Pinkie… She’s smart. She’s smart with ponies—has to be. She knows her way around a conversation, around a relationship. She knows everything about everyone, exactly what they love and what they need and what, above all else, makes them happy. For some reason, the same logic don’t apply to herself, but credit where credit is due. And she’s stubborn. She knows what she wants and she does it, and she won’t react well if you put yourself in the way of it. Most of all, she can’t stand being rejected. Any part of her. Her happiness, but also her sadness. Her anger. All parts of her—non-negotiable. I know that. I do. That’s why I should have known better. Why I should have expected what she did next. She waited until night. Long into the night. Long after her sisters had sat her down to tell her the news she’d already known. Long after she’d tucked herself under her covers and turned out the lights. I had been sleeping on her floor. She liked me close. I guess she waited until she thought I was asleep, and just happened to guess wrong. It must be hard to tell in the dark and the quiet of the night. She slipped out from underneath that old quilt and crept to the door. Hooves light on the hardwood. The gentlest twist of the knob you could ever imagine. I let her. Thought she needed water and wanted to get it herself. I thought it was a good thing. A sign that she wanted to be independent. I was proud of her. Then the screen door clapped shut. I sat up. Bedding thrown off me in a second. Up and to the window in another. Pinkie trotted down the front porch steps and paused. Why? Was she looking for something? Someone? Hesitating? I thought—hoped—that maybe all she wanted was some air. The summer night had a certain freshness to it. Maybe all she wanted was a cool breeze on her face and a moment alone. But then she turned. She circled the house. I couldn’t see, but I knew: The shed. The shotguns. I ran. I clattered down the stairs and out the front door, not caring who heard or who woke. I think I may have shouted her name once or twice, but I have no idea what made it out of my sleepy lips.  All I knew is that I had to put myself between Pinkie and the shotgun. I barreled out the front door and down the porch steps. They screamed back at me, but I didn’t care. Hardly felt it. It was like one long fall—one tumble towards the pony I had pushed to something unspeakable. “Pinks!” I forced out at last. “Pinks, wait!” My hooves beat the ground. The world fell away. I saw her against the dark of the shed, her pink coat glowing in the dark. She looked over her shoulder at me. Those wide, innocent eyes she had when there was nothing left in her chest to feel for real. She was holding a shotgun. “Pinks!” I screamed. “For the love of Celestia, you put that down!” She just froze. She let me tumble to her, grab the shotgun, kick it across the rock. She just stared. “What in the hay are you doing?!” I scolded. “What do you think you’re doing with that?! Why would you—wh-what are you—” She just stared. The words stopped coming. “You didn’t wake anypony up, did you?” Pinkie asked softly. “Did I—” I scoffed. “I don’t rightly care if I did! Now you come right back inside and—” “Jackie, I wasn’t—!” She cut herself off, stomped her foot on the ground, and made a sound of frustration. “I wasn’t.” “You…” I looked at her. Her eyes were clear. Even as blank and late-night sleepy as they were, they had a clarity that I trusted. An honesty. “You… weren’t?” Pinkie bit her lip and shook her head. I swallowed. She wasn’t. I sucked in a slow breath and tried to calm my racing heart. My gaze wandered back over to the shotgun on the ground. “Then… then what?” Pinkie clenched her jaw and, without answering, moved to the weapon. Hefted it. Examined it carefully. It was heavy—I could tell by the way she held it. The way she tensed her legs and shoulders. “Pinkie.” “I’m gonna kill it.” It was a harsh word. It sounded ugly in her mouth. I wished she could unsay it. I wished she could take it back, snatch it out of the sky and jaw it back into her mouth. I wished we could lock up the shotgun and never, ever think about that horrible urge ever again. I wished I couldn’t picture it. But she couldn’t. And I could. “Pinks, I—” “Please don’t try to talk me out of it,” Pinkie said. It was remarkable how much like herself she sounded. How utterly and completely normal, like she was asking someone to walk her to the market or see a show with her. Like she was begging not to be left alone late at night. “I… I thought about it all day,” she continued. “And I’m not being stupid. But I just—I just need to. I have to.” “You don’t.” “I do!” Pinkie shook the shotgun, and I heard metal rattle. “I just know I do.” “You don’t!” I pounded my hoof on the ground. “You—I won’t let you! You can’t take that back, Pinkie! You can’t un—” “I know!” Pinkie cut me off. Harsh. Sharp. Loud. Her face was flushed. She looked down at the ground. Her grip on the shotgun slackened and bit. “Jackie, everyone treats me like I… can’t. Or like I’m dumb, or too innocent, or too optimistic to get stuff.” She blinked forcefully. Thinking. “I know I’m a mess. I know I fall apart over the littlest stuff sometimes, and I know I make life hard for other ponies when I… y’know.” I couldn’t even respond. My eyes were glued to the shotgun. My tongue was tied. “I’m angry.” “I know,” I whispered. “And I’m sad.” “I know it.” “And those feelings have to go somewhere,” Pinkie said. “And, for once, I’m gonna put them somewhere they deserve to be.” I heard her. All I saw was the gun in her hooves. “It’s… it’s what my dad would do,” she whispered. “Would have done.” I remember, when I was grieving, I did the strangest things. One thing I didn’t do for a very long time—in fact, I still hardly do—was talk about my parents. Even in a nice way. Even remembering. But, even if I didn’t talk about them, I thought about them constantly. And a lot of the things I did were because of them. Pinkie’s quilt I’d never seen before. The top self of her closet, filled with trinkets I didn’t know, couldn’t match to her at all. The bandana she pulled over her mane. The ribbon she used to tie it up. The look in her eyes when she was sitting for breakfast, when she was working the fields, even now as she looked down at the gun in her hooves. They weren’t hers. They weren’t even her sisters. It was the shadow of her parents. Ever-present in her mind, even if I couldn’t recognize it. I could now, though. I saw the thoughtful, tired eyes of her mother. The stoic and harsh jaw of her father. The way she held onto them, and them to her. Like ghosts. I swallowed hard. And I said, “okay.”