//------------------------------//
// Sweetie Belle's Joy 
// Story: The Public Life of Sweetie Belle 
// by BronyWriter 
//------------------------------//


Three years later


A one night stand. That was how it the next chapter of Sweetie Belle's life began. 

The stallion had been so gentle, so kind, so loving. He had told her sweet nothings and bought her some fruity drinks followed be a little bit of hard cider. That night, well, it had been consensual and frankly wonderful for Sweetie Belle. In truth, she had only intended it to be a one night stand. It was just something for a little fun to blow off some steam. In hindsight, it was a little impersonal for her first time, but that was likely the alcohol.

Still, the knowledge that the stallion had only gotten with her to get bragging rights that he had lain with the sister of Equestria's most notorious serial killer had hurt. A lot. She knew that some fragments of Rarity's shadow would haunt her forever, but after thirteen years she had expected most of it to have faded away. The knowledge that ponies saw her merely in relation to her sister hurt, particularly when they saw her as merely a conquest. It was more than a little demeaning. 

Especially when it had its unintended side effects. 

Sweetie Belle sat in Dr. Redheart's clinic, fidgeting on the uncomfortably padded table that she had been instructed to sit on her haunches on. She had to fight a vaguely nauseous feeling. Strangely enough, it had only come in the morning for the past few weeks. She had wanted to think that it was a complete coincidence and that she had merely come down with something, but after some pressing from Twilight, she had gone to see nurse Redheart just to make sure that it wasn't something... unexpected. 

Sweetie Belle heard the door open and her head shot up just in time to see the nurse walk through the door with a file in her mouth. 

"So, is it true?" she asked. "Am I--"

Nurse Redheart held up a hoof to stem further questions and placed the file on a nearby counter. She flipped the folder open and scanned the contents for a moment before sighing and turning back to Sweetie Belle. "Sweetie Belle, the results are in."

"I figured that. What do they say?" questioned Sweetie Belle. 

Nurse Redheart closed the file and fully turned to face Sweetie Belle. "Sweetie Belle... you're pregnant." 


*  *  *  *


Sweetie Belle slowly trudged up the path to Sweet Apple Acres, a million thoughts racing in her mind at once. She had told Applejack and Apple Bloom that this might have been the case, but she wasn't quite sure how to tell them that she was with foal. 

Oh, Luna she had gotten knocked up. How was she supposed to explain to her friends that an ultimately manipulative one night fling had resulted in her becoming a mother? Of course, it wasn't exactly unheard of, that a one night stand resulted in a foal, but it was just one of those things that always happened to other ponies. It never happened to Sweetie Belle or anypony she knew. It was always somepony else that forgot to use protection. 

Well, now it was Sweetie Belle. Sweetie Belle was pregnant. A foal was on the way. 

Somehow the path up to Sweet Apple Acres seemed to expand as she walked across it to see the Apple family. 

Of all of the ponies she had to tell, the Dashes, Twilight, her parents, somehow the Apples seemed to scare her the most. Theirs was a family very heavily rooted in old traditions. Granny Smith had taught Applejack, Apple Bloom, and Big Mac that intercourse and foals were for after marriage and it was a tradition that the three of them were always proud to have stood by. Of course, Rainbow Dash used to joke that that was because they were too busy working, but they all knew the real reason in the end. It was how they had been raised and that was that. 

Well, now she was on her way to tell a trio of ponies, who were raised to believe that intercourse before marriage was wrong, that not only had she done the deed, but she was now pregnant as a result. The thought terrified her more than her upcoming pregnancy. 

As she approached the house, she was greeted with a trio of loud THWACKs  and she followed the source of the noise to see the three remaining members of the Ponyville Apple Family bucking their way through their south field. The vibrations from their blows caused Sweetie Belle to take a step back. The rational part of her brain told her that she shouldn't be worried, that even if the Apples were disappointed in her they wouldn't do anything. They wouldn't ban her from Sweet Apple Acres and they wouldn't yell at her for her mistake. Apple Bloom was a fellow former Cutie Mark Crusader after all. 

So why was she shaking like an earthquake had begun as she walked up to the trio of apple farmers?

Sweetie Belle began taking deep breaths as she shakily walked up to the remaining three members of the Apple family. It wasn't too long before the three of them spotted their visitor and they all stopped working to greet her. 

"Hey, Sweetie Belle," greeted Apple Bloom. She pushed up her own red tinted Stetson and wiped some sweat from her brow as Sweetie Belle approached. 

"Hey, Apple Bloom," replied Sweetie Belle. Gosh, even her voice was shaking. Her fellow crusader's older sister must have noticed her nervousness and she frowned at Sweetie Belle. 

"Somethin' wrong, sugar cube?" she asked. "You look like yer about to keel over."

Sweetie Belle felt like she was about to keel over. The rational part of her mind told her that she was being ridiculous, but the rest of her wasn't so sure. The conflict in her brain caused her to only quietly babble out a few nonsensical words before she took a deep breath and forced something resembling Equish out. 

"I... I went to go see Redheart today," she began. "I... talked to her and I got tested for... what we talked about earlier." 

Apple Bloom's eyes widened at the news. "And?" she eagerly questioned. 

"I...the test, it... it came back and..."

"You're pregnant, aren't you sugar cube?" 

Hearing Applejack say it finally destroyed what was left of Sweetie Belle's courage and she burst into tears. "Yes!" she wailed. "I'm pregnant!"

Applejack and Apple Bloom immediately rushed to their friend's side and Applejack wrapped her in a motherly hug and stroked her mane. "Shh, it's alright, Sweetie Belle," she soothed. "Yer goin' to be okay." 

"I'm pregnant out of wedlock!" sobbed Sweetie Belle. "I'm a bad mare!"

"Now don't be talkin' foolish like that," scolded Apple Bloom. "You ain't a bad mare just because you made a mistake. We all make 'em"

Sweetie Belle looked up at her friend with watery eyes. "But I'm not ready to be a mommy! I'm not ready to raise a child knowing that one day I'm going to have to tell it who her aunt was and what she did! My child is going to find out someday and what am I supposed to tell it?"

"The truth," said Applejack simply. "You tell your child the truth, even if it hurts and Ah know it will. You recall how mah parents died in a carriage accident? Well, Ah had to have that talk with Apple Bloom one day when Ah thought she was old enough."

"Oh that's not the same and you know it!" insisted Sweetie Belle. "Your parent’s death was an accident; my sister was executed by Princess Celestia for slaughtering dozens of ponies including a mare and her tiny filly!"

"Sweetie Belle, Ah ain't sayin' that you have to give her any details," said Applejack. "And Ah know that someday your foal will find out about what Rarity did, there's no gettin' around that."

"But that's why she has her mommy to help her through all of that," Apple Bloom pointed out. "It’ll be your job when the time does come to make sure she knows that your sister was just a sad pony who did bad things but she regretted them very much before she died. You can ease the blow that learnin' what Rarity did will cause."

"But I don't want my foal to have to learn about that!" wailed Sweetie Belle. 

"But it'll have to someday," said Applejack gently. "Sweetie Belle, if ya found a nice stallion and married him and had a foal, your foal would still have to learn someday about what kind of mare your sister was. You couldn't put it off forever under the best circumstances."

Sweetie Belle sniffled and wiped her eyes with her foreleg. "But I'd have my husband to help me through with that!"

"Sweetie Belle, you are gonna have Faust knows how many friends to help ya with it now!" said Apple Bloom. "Ya have me and my family, Scoots and Rainbow Dash, Twilight, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and the Cakes, the list goes on! You never had to go through this alone." 

"But... but..."

"Sweetie Belle, Ah guess what it comes down to in the end is that yer gonna have this foal whether yer ready for it or not."  Applejack stood up and extended a hoof to help Sweetie Belle up. "Now are ya gonna accept the help of the ponies who love ya and want to help ya or not?"

Sweetie Belle sniffled once again but the kind words of Applejack and Apple Bloom had helped calm her nerves significantly. She sighed and gently touched her stomach with her left foreleg, marveling for a brief moment that life was growing within. Finally she looked up at the two smiling Apples and nodded. "Yes, I would love all the help I can get." 

For the first time since she had found out that she was pregnant, Sweetie Belle smiled. 


*  *  *  *


"Ooh, I want to see the baby pony!" cried Pinkie Pie. The pink party mare was shifting nervously in her chair, eagerly awaiting the news that Sweetie Belle had given birth to her child. 

Scootaloo frowned at the twitchy pink mare. "Pinkie Pie, would you mind sitting still for a little bit? You're making me nervous!" Rainbow Dash glanced briefly at her adopted daughter and a small grin crept on her face as if she was the only pony in the room who fully grasped the impossibility of Scootaloo's request. 

"Pinkie, it's going to be okay," reassured Twilight. "We have some of the best doctors in Ponyville here. Both her and the foal are going to be fine."

"But how do you know that?!" said Pinkie wildly. "What if something goes wrong? What if Sweetie Belle's foal comes out fine, but they accidentally switch the foal with another one that was also born today but who really isn't Sweetie belle's foal and the two foals find out someday that the ponies that they think are their mothers aren't really their mothers because they accidentally got switched at birth and they have to go through all of the--"

"Pinkie Pie, I don't really see that as very likely," said Rainbow Dash flatly. 

"Besides, when have ya every heard of that happenin' to anypony?" Applejack questioned. 

"It happened to me!!" wailed Pinkie Pie. 

The waiting room was silent as they processed Pinkie Pie's stunning revelation. "R-really?" said Twilight. 

"No not really," said Pinkie Pie. "But it's plausible enough that you believed me!" 

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Oh for goodness sakes, Pinkie.  I have never heard of foals getting switched at birth. Besides, I think that Sweetie Belle is the only Ponyville mare who was this far along, so she'd be the only mare who's giving birth tonight!" 

"But--"

Before Pinkie Pie could spout out another paranoid Pinkie Theory, the two large doors to the hospital interior opened and the doctor walked in levitating a clipboard in front of him. "Excuse me, are you all Sweetie Belle's friends?" he asked. 

"Yes, yes we are!" said Scootaloo. 

"How's she doin' doc?"

"How's the foal?" asked Pinkie Pie. "You didn't accidentally switch the foal with another mare's child, did you?!"

The doctor looked absolutely flustered at Pinkie's question. "I--"

"DID YOU?!" 

"No, to my knowledge we didn't!" insisted the confused doctor. 

"Does that mean--" began Pinkie Pie. 

"Yes, Sweetie Belle delivered successfully and she is with her daughter in her room now. You can go see her if you want. I must insist that you--"

The doctor never finished his words in front of an audience. The second that the collective group heard that they could see their friend; they all bolted towards Sweetie Belle's room as if Paradise itself awaited them. With the waiting room empty, the doctor grumbled the rest of his request before turning around and following the group back towards Sweetie Belle's room. 

Thankfully for the group, the maternity ward wasn't too far away from the waiting room and they found Sweetie Belle's room in a matter of minutes. Pinkie Pie insisted that the group calm down slightly before they entered the room so as to not disturb the new mother and her foal. The group did just that before Scootaloo knocked on the door. 

"Come in," said a strained voice that clearly came from Sweetie Belle. Twilight used her magic to open the door and the seven ponies slowly filed into the room. 

Most of the room gasped when they saw what was on the bed. Sweetie Belle was sitting up, cradling a tiny bundle in her forelegs and smiling wider than she had in over a decade. She looked up when she saw the group come in. "Shh. She's sleeping," she whispered. The group nodded and tip-hooved over to the bed to see the foal. Sweetie Belle adjusted her forelegs so that those gathered around her could better see her daughter. 

"Oh isn't she the most precious thing you've ever seen?" cooed Pinkie Pie. 

"And she looks a lot like ya too," Apple Bloom observed. 

Indeed she did. The foal was the same shade of white that ran in Sweetie Belle's family. She had a purple mane, the shade of which was somewhere between the light purple of Sweetie Belle's and the solid purple of her sister. The look was completed with a tiny horn on the foal's head. 

Applejack moved past Pinkie Pie to get a better look at the foal and smiled when she saw the foal in Sweetie Belle's grasp. "She's more beautiful than Ah imagined she would be."

"What's her name?" asked Scootaloo, moving closer to the bed to get a better look. 

"Her name..." began Sweetie Belle. "Her name is Joyous Blossom because she brought joy into my life like nothing else has."

"Ah think it's a beautiful name," said Apple Bloom. 

Scootaloo nodded and smiled at the foal. "Hey, Joyous Blossom. It's your awesome Aunt Scootaloo. I just know you're going to be the best niece ever." 

Suddenly, Joyous Blossom began shifting in the blankets wrapped around her and her tiny eyes fluttered open. The gathered ponies gasped slightly at her beautiful blue eyes, eyes exactly the same shade as...

"She has her aunt's eyes," whispered Twilight. Sweetie Belle froze for a second and mother and daughter stared into each other's eyes as if each was trying to discover who the pony underneath those eyes really was. 

All of a sudden, the corners of Joyous Blossom's mouth turned upwards and to the happiness of all, the foal smiled at her mother. A joyful laugh escaped Sweetie Belle and she nuzzled her daughter. Happy tears formed at the corners of everypony's eyes and for the first time in fourteen years, Sweetie Belle knew that all was right with the world.