//------------------------------//
// The Ugly Truth 
// Story: Timed Ramblings 
// by Midnight herald 
//------------------------------//

	Applejack was dying, and that was the ugly truth. Already, her vision was tunneling, it was getting hard to focus. Her heart stuttered again before beating on doggedly, tiredly. She turned her aching, stiff neck to look out the window again, to catch the weak red sunset as it glinted off the castle walls and, further out, sparkled beautifully through Canterlot falls. She sucked in another strained breath and wheezed it back out, grinning even through her stomach’s latest flare of near-blinding pain. Not that she wasn’t nearly blind by now anyways.

Maybe, she thought blearily, watching the sun dipping below the horizon, maybe it isn’t too bad, death. T’was only natural, after all. She shifted again on the downy mattress, anything to lessen the aches in her ancient and gnarled spine. The bedroom door opened with a slow creak, and Applejack let her eyes wander over to take a look. Twilight, rumpled and tear-stained, slinked inside on quiet hooves. A nervous young cadet followed behind her, shaking and shivering and rattling his ill-fitting armor. Applejack managed a shaky, sluggish smile as she met Twilight’s eyes, although it fell away when she saw the desperate, fiery shine in them, halfway between love and total madness.

You know what to do. Applejack shuddered painfully and ignored the voice, ignored the trembling filly who peered at her from behind Twilight’s wings. Twilight hopped onto the bed and gently cradled Applejack in her strong forelegs, tears shining in her wide purple eyes. Applejack raised a wrinkled, weakened hoof and wiped away a tear before it fell. “Hey there, lady,” she wheezed, smiling again. Her raised hoof made the slow, ponderous journey to Twilight’s nose and tapped it once, twice... and fell to her side, full of angry pins and needles. Twilight cried roughly and nearly broke down, choking down a second heaving sob before turning to the young guard.

“Private, please come here,” she ordered. Her voice was frighteningly steady, although it nearly cracked twice from the strain of authority. The young filly stumbled over with a snappy salute and sat rigidly by the dark purple duvet, her bright green eyes staring desperately into the middle distance. For all that Applejack’s eyesight and hearing had gone to Tarturus these past few years, she could smell just as well as she had as a mare of twenty, and this filly reeked of sweat and piss and fear. Applejack sighed and looked at Twilight again, at her clenching jaw and trembling wings and burning mad eyes.

“Twi, honey,” Applejack rasped, “maybe this is for the best.”

“No,” Twilight whispered, holding her so tightly that it hurt, it burned.

“Sugarcube, I’m old. I’m so old,” Applejack begged, as her heart stuttered and skipped again, dangerously. She could feel her eyes prickling with tears, could feel that old hunger stirring and waking in her chest. “Maybe it’s real, this time. Maybe we should --”

“No!” NO! Applejack winced at the sheer desperation, the sheer command that Twilight’s broken voice and the other … thing carried. “Please, Applejack,” Twilight murmured, her dry, chapped lips brushing against Applejack’s ear. “You can’t leave me. I need you. You’re the only one I have left.” Applejack knew that, sure as she knew she had maybe hours left. It was the truth, the ugly truth. Since Luna and Cadence had left in search of Celestia, more than a century ago, Applejack had been the one thing between Twilight Sparkle and total insanity, the one thing between the Princess and total tyranny. And, though the years had been awful, painful things, Applejack had remained. Applejack had endured.

And as she looked into Twilight Sparkle’s bloodshot, beautiful eyes, so full of raw want and need and that terrible, burning madness, she knew her choice, she knew her duty. So she shifted and rolled out of Twilight’s embrace, reached her shaky hooves up to the guardsmare’s face, and let the hunger have at it. Her lips pressed tightly to the frightened mare’s, and the thing sucked and fed. The awful, terrible moan that escaped the filly’s mouth filled her with guilt, just like it always did. But all the same, she felt the life flowing into her, washing away the pain and weariness from her achy, swollen joints and leaving them soothed and steady. Sounds and light trickled back to their old intensity, and her muscles buzzed with energy and vigor they had lost years ago.
--TIME LIMIT--

She let the dried-out corpse fall from her hooves and forced back the dry heaves and bile that always came afterwards. And she nuzzled firmly, desperately into Twilight’s warm chest, felt Twilight’s strong wings caressing her over and over again, heard Twilight’s litany of sincere, awful, ugly apologies. Because the ugly truth of it was that Applejack couldn’t leave Twilight alone. Not now, not ever. As she wept and cursed herself and her damned weakness through the night, right up until when Twilight had to bring in the dawn, she promised herself once again that this time would be the last. She would break that promise, she would break it until Luna or Cadence came back, with or without the missing sun goddess. And that, perhaps, was the ugliest truth of them all.