Chapter 22
Gettin’ Sympathy from a Styre.
Heartbreak kicked the apple tree pretty hard. “Eeeyup,” she replied, almost imitating Big Mac to the letter.
Applejack put on her poker face. “Ya have to approach this slowly, ya got her opening up about her last job, and by all definitions, that didn’t lead anywhere horrible. She seemed pretty calm about it. Maybe ‘cause it isn’t a sore subject, just kinda float the conversation over an see if we can get her ta open up a bit more. But dern it! Ah need ta know if she really has any interest in Big Mac! Ah can’t have a pony like her trailing him! That’d be like her just starting her problems she had there here all over again!” “Ah maself have made plenty of mistakes. Why just last month ah sent a crate of red gala’s when the folks wanted golden delicious!”
“You don’t say,” Heartbreak replied, focusing her attention on the task even more.
“Yeah, course ya just have ta pick yerself up and keep moving on!” Applejack gave a rather wide grin to Heartbreak. Heartbreak only returned with a low glower.
“You mean, ‘keep on buckin’?’” She asked, turning her head to face the tree.
“Uhm, huh, never heard that expression before, but, yeah!” She chuckled. “Hope ya don’t mind, but ah’m guna use that. Maybe get somepony ta make me a plaque with that on it.”
Heartbreak looked a little less tense and relaxed a bit. “A wood carving with you bucking an apple tree or something like that?” she asked.
“Yeah, sum’thin like that,” Applejack replied, looking thoughtful. “Ya know, yer not as bad as Twi’ was making ya out ta be.”
“Gee, thanks,” Heartbreak said, kicking the tree.
“Well, ah just mean that yer not...totally crass,” Applejack said, trying to rework her words.
Heartbreak wasn’t buying it. “Sure,” She replied frowning. “Is this ‘polite conversation’ or are you going somewhere with all this?”
“It’s just, seein’ that yer a bit nicer than what ya seemed when ah first met ya-” Applejack started.
“Ah, wonderful memories. Wonderful binding, rope-filled memories,” Heartbreak interrupted, her tone turning a bit on the sarcastic side.
“Uhm heh, yeah. Like ah was saying, seeing this different side of ya,” Applejack scratched her head, “Ah can’t help but wonder what ya did that was so bad that got ya sent here.”
“I drove Twilight batty, told her that she wasn’t doing science properly and woke Spike up. Then I-” Heartbreak began.
“No...Ah mean, what done got ya ta Equestria,” Applejack said. Heartbreak’s eyes shot forward while she breathed heavily. Applejack swore that there was a strange glint in the mare’s eyes.
“I asked you not to talk about that,” Heartbreak replied, turning her head again.
“Ah’m just tryin ta understand ya, H.B.,” Applejack replied. “And ta do that, ah’m afraid that ah might have ta be a bit more forward with ya.”
Heartbreak let out a harder kick against the tree and three apples plopped to the ground. There was a slight satisfied grin that flickered across her face upon hearing them thud to the ground. “What’s to figure out? I did something bad, and then something bad happened back.”
“That don’t explain what’cha did ta them that was so bad,” Applejack replied, shaking her head. “Ah mean, did ya cheat on them?”
Heartbreak refused to look at Applejack. Instead, another mighty kick ushered the falling of a few more apples. “No.”
“Did ya leave some of them fer som’thin’ else?” Applejack asked.
“No.” Heartbreak kicked the tree again. “Didn’t I ask that we not talk about this?”
“Well yes, but there’s just som’thin’ naggin’ in the back of ma mind, an ah think that we should get it out in the open! Otherwise it’s just guna fester.” Applejack explained.
Heartbreak kicked the tree even harder. “And I said, ‘No.’ And according to Fluttershy, no means,” Her back hoof landed solidly on the tree cracking some of the bark, “No!”
“Hey now! No hurtin’ ma trees!” Applejack shouted. She took a deep breath. “Look, ah’m just tryin’ ta help ya! If ya were more honest with us, then we six wouldn’t be left ta speculate about what yer world is like and what’cha got sent here for!”
“And I said that I don’t want to talk about it!” Heartbreak’s face twitched.
Applejack snorted. “Look here, Little-Miss-Heartbreak! Ah’m yer teacher and yer ma student! Ah’m trying ta teach ya something about honesty! An’ sometimes bein’ honest about things hurts! But once ya get the truth out, ya’ll feel a lot better!”
Heartbreak’s eye twitched while she bit her lower lip. She looked like she was about to buck the tree again when Applejack stopped her. Heartbreak frowned and sat down before rubbing her temples. “Twilight tried that very same line with me, Applejack. You’re the teacher, I am but the lowly student.”
“Ah didn’t say-” Applejack began.
“Let me finish.” She crossed her hooves. “It didn’t get her very far. You might be the teacher and I am here to learn, but that doesn’t mean you can push me into a place that I am not ready to go. Even if you feel like it will, ‘teach me about honesty.’”
“Hey now, honesty happens to be ma element. Though ah’m sure ya know about that already,” Applejack countered.
“When you’re right, you’re right. I do know that honesty is your element, Applejack. You’re, ‘Honest Applejack,’” Heartbreak replied. Applejack couldn’t help but feel a small bit of pride from that statement. “Except when you’re not.”
“Bah?” Applejack said in a bit of confusion.
“Oh come on, ‘Little-Miss-Honesty,’” Heartbreak said in a condescending tone. “Has there ever been a time in your life that you haven’t been honest?”
Applejack frowned. “Oh, Ah know what this is about,”
Heartbreak smirked. “Oh, you do?” She asked innocently.
“Ya! Yer gonna bring up what happened with Discord, ain’t ya?!” Applejack started. “Well look here, little Miss. We didn’t have any control over that there. He screwed with our minds and turned everything upside down!” Applejack smiled with a bit of satisfaction. “That oughta put her in her place!”
“That’s too easy of a target, A.J.,” Heartbreak replied, looking up. “Tell me,” she put a hoof to her mouth in thought. “Did you tell Miss Cherry Jubilee that you were going back to Ponyville, or did you leave a, ‘dear everyp-p-pony,’ letter like you did for your family?”
Applejack flinched. She didn’t expect that. “H-how?”
“I am not explaining how I know, Applejack. That isn’t important. What’s important is that even after your friends came to find you, you couldn’t bring yourself to being honest with them,” Heartbreak replied, her face twitching slightly.
Applejack backed away. “That’s not true-”
“Like h-h-hay it isn’t. You felt the need to run from them, rather than fess up to what happened.” Heartbreak looked at her dead in the eye. There was an almost surreal look in the mare’s eyes. “Even to the point of nearly breaking a Pinkie Promise.”
Applejack’s composure broke, she hadn’t thought about that day in years. How she had been practicing, working hard, and trying to get everything right, only to fail. She felt that she couldn’t go back to Ponyville until she had the money she had promised them. Hadn’t she learned her lesson? Not to run away from your problems, but to run to your friends and family?
There was a dark look on Heartbreak’s face. A look that almost said ‘Your move, Applejack.’ “Alright, ah get that ya know pretty much everythin’ about us.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “An’ that ya could easily bring up any moment where we were at our weakest.” Applejack walked to Heartbreak. “And it could be almost like a game ta ya-”
“Ap-” Heartbreak backed away, her expression breaking a bit.
“Hey now, ah let you talk, and now it’s ma turn,” Applejack said. “What ya said there has truth ta it. What’cha leaving out is what happened at the end, where despite ma running away, despite the way ah treated ma friends,” Applejack had backed Heartbreak against the tree that she had just been bucking, “They came back for me. An’ if yer not gonna be honest with us, then ah’ll be honest with you.
Ya might say that Twi’ sent ya here ‘cause ya done an upset her, but ya been upsettin’ her for the whole of the month!”
Heartbreak rolled her eyes. “Right, you try staying under house arrest for an entire month and see how you like it!”
“Ya wouldn’t been stuck in there fer so long if ya hadn’t been draggin’ yer hooves on the ground!” Applejack replied. “Accourdin’ ta Twi, ya went through every single paper there and handled it like it was gonna explode or som’thin!”
Heartbreak frowned as she looked at Applejack. “I see you girls like to talk amongst yourselves, most likely at the spa?”
“As a matter of fact, yes!” Applejack replied. “We do talk! And it was at the spa! Ya could have come if ya actually worked harder or at the very least let somepony help ya!”
“I let Spike help me for a while!” Heartbreak said defensively.
“Ya could have let Twi’ help you and gotten the whole mess done a lot quicker!” Applejack shouted back.
“Knowing Twilight, she would have wanted to inspect every single paper and organize them! I didn’t need her nitpicking quirks getting in the way of something that I didn’t want her to see!” Heartbreak explained. “She has an addiction for organizing and making lists you know!”
“Sure! Cause all them fancy drawings of yers must have been too much fer our little pony minds ta handle!” Applejack replied, waving hooves around. “And yer one ta talk about quirks an’ addictions! Way ah understand it, when Twi’ gave ya some of that there fancy magic tea, yer whole personality changed! Yer were more open, more active and apparently wanted more!”
Heartbreak stomped her left hoof. “That’s because I was being drugged, Applejack! Doesn’t it bother you in the slightest that one of your friends felt the need to drug another p-p-pony in order to get them to, ‘behave?’”
Applejack snorted and glared at Heartbreak. “What bothers more is that one of ma friends was pushed ta the point where she felt the need ta do so! And the way ah heard it, she was trying ta just get ya a cup of tea!”
“Yes! And she could have just gotten me a cup of tea from Zecora without the magical element to it!” Heartbreak replied.
“‘Course then ya went and had to make it stronger than it should have been!” Applejack countered. “Is that sum’thin ya did back where yer from? Cause ah get the feelin’ that the whole lot of ya back there are addicted to a whole mess of things!”
“As a matter of fact, I do like my tea strong! But that’s beside the point!” Heartbreak was now rubbing her temples and frowning.
“There are a lot of points here. One of them bein’ that back where yer from, they don’t know how ta take things in moderation!” Applejack was now pacing a bit. “We might have what ya would call, ‘drugs,’ but we pony folk know how to moderate ourselves so that we don’t get into what ya would call addictive behaviors!”
Heartbreak frowned and crossed her hooves. “There are different forms of, ‘addictive behaviors,’ there, Applejack. Does, ‘workaholic,’ ring any bells?”
Applejack looked confused. “What the hay are you talking about?”
“Oh come on Applejack, there was one time that you decided in your head that you would buck the entirety of Sweet Apple Acres by yourself!” Heartbreak stated.
“Ya, but ah-” Applejack started.
“But you eventually asked for help! You eventually realized you couldn’t do it on your own, but that sort of behavior right there is a form of addiction!” Heartbreak threw up her hooves. “And it doesn’t stop at Twilight’s need for precision or your constant stubborn working! Rarity -has- to be fashionable! Rainbow Dash is always seeking the next adrenaline rush! Pinkie Pie is always either eating sweets or needs to fetting party!”
Applejack looked at the exasperated pony. She did have points in all of these things, but these things were almost at the core of what made her friends her friends. She quirked and realized something. There was a name missing. “And what about Fluttershy?”
Heartbreak looked confused for a moment. “What about Fluttershy?”
“What’s her little addition, little-miss-know-it-all?” Applejack asked.
Suddenly Heartbreak started looking uncomfortable. “Well...uhm, uhm, well,” she flustered rubbing her hoof against her ankle.
“Out wit’it! If yer gonna berate ma friends for what makes them them, ya better include all of them!” Applejack demanded.
“I-I, it’s just, well,” Heartbreak’s voice started dropping to a whisper. Applejack glowered over her. Heartbreak cringed. “Her obsessive need to mother every living thing?”
Applejack frowned. “Ya know you aren’t one ta talk,” She said in an authoritative voice. “Ya got plenty of little quirks and obsessive behaviors according ta Twilight. An’ it’s really funny that ya point out Twi’ need for perfection, seeing that when yer drawin’ ya can’t go nearly a few seconds without erasing and redrawing the same dern line over fifteen times!”
“I’m trying to get back to drawing at the same level I used to be able to, Applejack! That takes practice! And I did not go over it fifteen times!” Heartbreak protested.
“According ta Twilight ya did! She was hearing this clickin’ noise that was gettin’ under her hooves, and she goes ta find out what it was, only ta find that it’s ya with yer fancy pencil, drawing and redrawing a stick figure! Ah don’t see why ya don’t just draw like everyother pony does! It would be a lot easier fer ya ta practice like that!” Applejack could see that Heartbreak was starting to retreat.
“It’s j-just that that’s the way I need to draw, Applejack!” Heartbreak said, fighting to regain composure.
“Sure it is! Ah think it’s sum’else that ya don’t want ta tell us about. Sum’thin’ that ya think we can’t handle! An’ ah’ll tell you what, we ponies can handle a lot more than ya think we can!” Applejack stated.
“Oh yes, just like you handled asking for help,” Heartbreak started rolling her eyes. “Or handled playing fair with Rainbow Dash, or handled Dis-”
Applejack snorted and stomped her hooves before getting eye to eye with Heartbreak. “Now look here, Little-Miss-Heartbreak, ya might want ta take a long hard think about the next words that are gonna come out of that mouth of yers. Cause, ah get it, ya know our weakest moments. Ya know how we handled them. An’ yer holding no bones about bringing them up. But that knife cuts both ways.”
Heartbreak steeled herself. “Right, you don’t-”
“Ah don’t know ya? Ah reckon that I don’t know ya all too well. What yer missing is that, those moments? Those moments show us what kinda ponies we really are. And yer right, ah don’t know ya, or what kinda pony ya really are. But you’ve had yer weak moments. Ah could bring them Nine, ah could bring up when yer were chasing some pony around Ponyville while on magic tea. But ah wasn’t there fer those moments, and those moments really didn’t tell me anything about ya. But there was one moment ah did see ya at yer weakest. That was back on the train ta Canterlot when ya realized that back where yer from? Nopony remembers you.”
Heartbreak’s composure completely shattered. She swallowed hard and started to stutter. “A-ap-ap,appleja-ack I j-just didn’t want t-to talk about it.” She hugged herself. Applejack wondered momentarily if that was just for show or if she really was that emotional. “I-I mean I d-d-didn’t,” her head drooped down. “I’m-I’m s-can’t I apologize?” She tried pushing words out but they weren’t coming.
“Yer waiting now ta apologize?” Applejack replied, frowning. “Ya can say that yer sorry, but fact the matter remains that ya said what ya said. See, ya might be plenty book smarts and some fancy tools fer drawing, but ah remember looking through the window of the door on the train to see how Twilight was handling things. And ya know what saw? Ah saw her tryin’ ta comfort a devastated little filly who just wanted her mum, only ta realize that her mum wouldn’t even recognize her even if she saw her.” Heartbreak didn’t say anything, but instead hung her head. She looked like she wanted to say something, but instead bit her lip and rubbed her face. “An ya know who came to help that devastated filly when she was about ta get her brains scrambled by the Princesses?”
“You all did,” Heartbreak replied in a voice that was barely a whisper.
“That’s right. Ah said we’d be there fer ya if ya needed our help. But ya gunna have ta want our help.” Applejack was feeling a bit of turmoil over this one pony. In but a span of ten minutes, she had pushed her through worried, to angry, to downright seething. How the hay did Twilight deal with this pony for an entire month!?
“U-understood,” Heartbreak finally replied.
Applejack looked like she was about to say something more when a deep voice bellowed out her name. “A.J.!”
Big Mac was standing just at the halfway point up the hill. “What the hay is it, Big Mac?! Can’t ya see that ah’m in the middle of som’thin’?!” Applejack hollered.
“Did ya forget about taking Granny ta the hospital today?!” He shouted back.
“Hospital?” Applejack asked.
“Fer her hip!” Big Mac replied.
“That’s taday?!” Applejack shouted back.
“Eeeyup!” Big Mac replied.
“Ah, Horsefeathers!” Applejack said, panicked. She looked at Heartbreak. “Right, we’re not done here. As ya can tell, ah’ve got things ta do. Yer gonna be up thinking about what’s been said and bucking these here trees.” Applejack ran to meet her brother. “Big Mac, can ya watch her ta make sure that she does her job? Ah want at least one of those baskets filled when ah get back.”
Big Mac looked at Heartbreak and then Applejack questioningly. “Eeeyup.”
"Thanks!" Applejack raced to the farm house, not even realizing that she had just left the two of them alone.