“Have you two met?” Turner asked.
“Nope,” said Big Mac.
“I don't think we ever have,” Shining Armor said smiling. “But I've met your sister. Both of them, actually, they were lovely.”
“And yours,” Big Mac nodded.
Sir Shining Armor, Captain of the Royal Guard, Prince Consort of the Crystal Empire, did not seem at all awkward or out of place in the therapist's office, sitting in a chair identical to the one which struggled to accommodate Big Mac. Shining Armor never seemed out of place anywhere, and his various titles did nothing to dim the charm and respect of his demeanour. It was well known that the guardspony made everypony he spoke to feel like his equal.
Yet here, the awkward silence remained.
Big Mac had not realized this was who Turner was referring to when he talked about “similar experiences”. It had taken a lot to convince the farmer to go along with the idea, and now mere moments after sitting down he was already beginning to regret it.
Shining Armor cleared his throat. “I feel like I should say something, in the interest of full disclosure,” he began. Big Mac raised an eyebrow. “I met with Twilight in Canterlot last week, and she mentioned that Applejack had talked to her...”
Big Mac let out of a miserable groan. “She told you about that?” Shining Armor nodded.
Turner coughed. “We don't have to talk about anything you don't want to,” he said.
Big Mac shook his head. “It ain't important,” he said. “It's just the reason she got me to go along with this whole talkin' thing.”
–
Applejack didn't like to bother her brother when he was out working, which was most of the time, but she needed to ask him something. She was supposed to be taking the red cart to market that day, but the thing was nowhere on the Acres to be found, and Apple Bloom steadfastly denied having used it, or lost it, or lent it out, or accidentally destroyed it in a misguided attempt at getting some kind of cart-transcendence cutie mark. Nor had Granny Smith seen it, which left only two options: either Big Mac had taken it with him by mistake, or somepony had gone and stolen it, and Applejack wasn't about to take any chances. So she had tossed on her hat and set out to the South Orchard to find the big stallion and see.
The South Orchard was the largest of all the fields on Sweet Apple Acres, and it took Applejack a good twenty minutes at a steady trot to cross it. It would have taken longer to find her brother, except that the sound of trees shaking from the impact of his hooves carried a long ways. She rarely came this way, as for one reason or another Big Mac generally handled the whole South Orchard himself, and Applejack was happy to let him keep a slice of the farm as his personal farming pride. Applejack was no expert, and had wondered on occasion if this was something stallions felt a need for, a piece of territory all their own.
The sound of bucking grew louder and louder as she drew closer, and she smiled as her brother came into view in the distance, along with the red cart, half-full of apple baskets. She opened her mouth to yell out a greeting, but hesitated when she noticed something odd. She halted, and stood behind a tree as she took a closer look at the stallion. His usual face of either stoic calm or contented satisfaction in a job done well was gone, replaced by an unhappy frown. The tree he was bucking, she saw, had no apples to shed, and by the looks of it hadn't for a good while: much of the bark was scraped clean off under the force of repeated impact from his hooves. And though he clearly hadn't noticed her approach, and nopony else was nearby, he seemed to be deep in a heated argument with somepony.
“...Ah told you it was a dumb idea,” Big Mac said. “Honestly. Pears, really? Ah swear...”
Crack. The tree shook, and the sound could be heard a mile away. A few leaves joined their comrades in covering the ground, the casualties of a prolonged assault.
“You're an idiot,” Big Mac continued. “A big, dumb idiot. 's just as well ya never say anythin', if ponies heard some of the crap ya come up with...”
Crack. A burst of splintered bark let go of the last strand holding on to the trunk and flew through the air.
“Well if ya're so damned smart then how come you aint helping? At least Ah try, all you do is hide away and... Rrrargh!”
CRACK.
“Big Mac?” Applejack stepped forward. “Are ya okay?”
The stallion froze and looked at her with wide eyes. “Umm... Eeyup?”
–
“Well, she demanded Ah tell her what was going on. Ah didn't wanna, but mah sister's a stubborn one and wouldn't let up,” Big Mac grudgingly continued. “A week goes by like that, and every day she goes out with me in the fields, does all mah chores alongside me, won't leave me alone, askin' me what's wrong every five minutes without fail, and Ah'm not sayin' a word to her. A couple times, Ah woke up at night, and she's standing in the door, and asks if Ah was having a nightmare, like Ah'm a little foal.” The powerful stallion crossed his forelegs and frowned. “Then one day she comes up to mah room after dinner and tells me she's made an appointment for me to talk to a brain doctor, whatchacallem, yeah, that, psychotherapist, and that she won't take no fer an answer. An' she just kept at it all day long until Ah went along with it.”
“I think your sister just wants you to be happy,” Shining Armor said. “Twilight told me that Applejack had come to her at her wit's end, asking for advice. Twilight actually seemed impressed, she said she'd never seen Applejack so rattled before. Apparently you really scared her with your performance.”
Big Mac tried to hide his face in his hooves, his strong red color slightly stronger than usual. “Ah was jus' talkin',” he mumbled.
“I can actually tell the rest of that story,” Shining Armor said. “Based on what Twilight told me...”
–
“Ah dunno what to do, Twi,” Applejack said as she paced back and forth on the library floor. “He's never been like this before. He won't talk to me. Ah've been going out with him to work in the orchards every day since, tryin' to be helpful an' supportive, tryin' to get him to open up more, ya know? But it ain't helpin'!”
“Isn't that what you did with Apple Bloom that one time as well?” Twilight asked. “When you decided she needed constant coddling and protection, and you got on her nerves so bad she decided to march into the Fire Swamp on her own?”
“This is completely different!” Applejack shot an angry look at her friend. “You know he's barely set hoof off the farm for months? He used to do market days almost as often as me. Now he hasn't done one in many weeks. Ah didn't really think much about it before now, but this musta' been goin' on for ages. Ah've talked to Granny Smith and Apple Bloom, and they agree wit' me.” She sighed. “Ah think he has nightmares. Ah've heard him mumblin' in his sleep, and sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night. Ah've tried askin' him about them but he just clams up and frets like a little colt. Ah'm at mah wits' end, Twi.”
Twilight nodded, considering her friend's words carefully. “Maybe you're not the right pony to get him to open up.”
“What in the hay is THAT supposed ta' mean?” Applejack glared angrily at the unicorn. “Are you tellin' me Ah'm a bad sister? Because you better be ready to back THAT up with yer hooves!”
“What? No!” Twilight shook her head, taking a step back. “Of course I would never think that, Applejack! I'm just saying that, maybe, Big Mac might find it easier to open up to somepony who isn't family.”
“That don't make a lick o' sense to me,” Applejack said. “The Apples are the closest darn family in all of Equestria. We tell each other everythin'!”
“Clearly that's not true in this case,” Twilight said apologetically.
Applejack glared at her for a second, then closed her eyes, sighed, and nodded. “Ah guess not.”
“Look,” Twilight said gently. “I know you and me and all the other girls share almost everything with each other. But maybe whatever's bothering Big Macintosh is... too personal to share with somepony so close. Maybe it would be easier for him to discuss it with somepony he doesn't know, somepony he won't have a personal relationship with. Like a therapist. Then he could talk it out without having to worry what anypony would think of him.”
“A therapist?” Applejack sounded sceptical. “Ah dunno, Twi... Big Mac would never go fer somethin' like that. Maybe you big city unicorns would, no offense, but us Apples ain't got time for that kind o' stuff.”
“Maybe it's worth a shot, though?” Twilight said, putting a hoof on her friend's back. “I know that if anypony can convince him to try it, it's you.”
–
“So really this is yer sister's fault,” Big Mac muttered.
“I suppose you could say that,” Shining Armor said. “I hope you're not planning some kind of revenge scheme now.”
Big Mac slumped over in his chair, looking miserable. “Ah just don't like ponies talkin' about me behind mah back.”
“Twily only wants to help,” Shining Armor said. “She told me she thought, if you couldn't open up to friends or family, maybe it would be easier to talk to somepony else.” He paused a second and thought about what he had just said. “But then, I'm not exactly a stranger either. If you don't want to talk to me either, that's fine.”
Big Mac grumbled, “Ah don't wanna waste yer time...”
Turner coughed to draw their attention. “Sir Armor, if it's alright I'd like it if you and mister Apple could share your experiences with each other. Big Mac, is that alright?”
Big Mac saw both the other stallions looking at him. He sighed. “Ah was brainwashed,” he said simply. “With love. More than once. Now Ah don't trust mah own feelings.”
Turner nodded. “We were hoping you could help by sharing your own experience,” he said to the unicorn.
“Hoo-boy,” Shining Armor said, and took a deep breath. “Where to begin. Well, it was in the runup to the wedding. Two weeks before the big day, changelings ambushed Cadance while she was taking a walk in the labyrinth garden. She was locked away in the forgotten crystal mines under the city, and Chrysalis took her place. Once we were alone, she cast her spell on me, and I was powerless to resist it. After that, we spent the next two weeks going over the city defenses and the wedding plans.”
His voice was as calm and collected as when he talked about anything else, even as he retold the story of his greatest failure. “The entire time we were together, she acted nothing at all like the Cadance I knew. It should have been completely obvious to me that something was seriously wrong. But because of the spell, it was...” he shook his head. “All the love I had for Cadance went straight to Chrysalis, even though they were nothing at all alike. Chrysalis only had to say the word, and I would ignore everything she was doing. She had me give her all the details of the Royal Guard's defensive strategies, for Celestia's sake! And I did it! That's why the changelings beat the guards so easily after my shield was broken. They knew exactly what we would do, and how to counter it. Because of me.”
“It was only after the spell was broken that I could see how obvious all the signs were. But I wasn't walking around in a dreamlike haze until then. Twilight never said that I was acting strangely, and neither did anypony else. I was behaving perfectly normally, and everything seemed perfectly normal to me. So given that, how am I supposed to tell the difference between which of my feelings are real and which aren't?”
“Of course, Cadance had everything much worse than me. She spent two weeks locked in a cave, kept barely alive so Chrysalis could mock her from above, telling her how her fiancee didn't even notice she was gone.”
Shining Armor sighed. “Cadance did nothing wrong, she didn't fail to see what was happening right under her muzzle, she didn't fail to see the difference between her fiancee and an impostor. That was all me. I left the love of my life to die because I couldn't resist one mind-altering spell. Some Captain of the Royal Guard, huh?”
The story itself was awful, but there was a surprisingly light tone to the telling, a streak of self-deprecating humor in the knight's voice that Big Mac hadn't expected to hear. “You got through it alright, though,” the farmer said.
Shining nodded. “Things could have been very different. In the Royal Guard, when I was just a cadet, I saw stallions stronger than I'll ever be who were broken by their memories of what they had seen and done in the Griffon Wars. Princess Celestia had seen it happen to too many ponies, and she approached me after the battle to talk to me about it. She told me she wanted a Captain of the Guard who would learn from his mistakes, but not be haunted by them, and wanted to make sure I was alright and had all the support I could need.”
“So I talked it out very well and very early,” Shining said. “The Princess wanted to get me to work through it all while it was still fresh, and she really has a way with words. Ponies think she's this ethereal, unapproachable thing, but I've never met a pony so concerned and so in touch with the thoughts and feelings of those around her. Just talking to her eased my mind, like magic. She got us both, me and Cadance, to explore all our feelings about what had happened, together. Then we went on our honeymoon.” He chuckled. “That helped too.”
“And ya trust that you and yer wife are both fine?” Big Mac asked.
“Yeah, we got through it,” Shining Armor said with a smile. “And I'm sure you will too, Mac.”
“But you're married to the princess of love,” Big Mac pressed on, watching Shining Armor intently. “She can make love with – Ah mean, she can create love with her own magic. How can ya be sure yer love for her is any more real than yer love for Chrysalis was?”
“Where does love come from, anyway?” Shining Armor asked. “Some ponies think Cadance can just force love on anypony she pleases, like a walking love potion. Others think she can only wake love that's already there, and bring it to the surface. How can I be sure?”
Big Mac didn't respond, but sat quietly watching the unicorn.
Shining Armor stretched back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “Well, I could say that if Cadance wanted to snatch herself a husband with magic she could have done much better than me,” he began. “I could say that when we first met I was just a nopony, spending my evenings at home playing Oubliettes and Ogres and Hocuspocus: The Get-Together with my friends, or practicing on my flugelhorn.” He chuckled, and sat up straight. “That's not a euphemism for anything, incidentally, I actually played the flugelhorn. I could say that she could have had any rich and powerful stallion she could lay her eyes on. I could say that the first time we met, I fell in love at first sight of her, and that she had no reason to want to use magic on this random gangly teenage geek of a colt. But the truth is, I just don't need a reason. How can I be sure?” He shrugged, and smiled wistfully. “I suppose I can't, really. But I am. I could doubt anything else in the world. But I can never doubt my love for Cadance.”
Big Mac struggled not to jolt in his cramped seat when he felt a shiver run down his spine. He also couldn't be sure. Maybe it was just a trick of the light. Maybe it was because the white unicorn had turned slightly, and his face was suddenly in the shadow. Or maybe, for just a split second while he spoke, his eyes had changed color.