//------------------------------//
// Chapter 22: Melancholy 
// Story: Melancholy Days 
// by Zurock 
//------------------------------//

	A dozen simple, round tables sat contained by a low wall, dropped in front of an ice cream shop like sprinkles on a sundae.  It was the happiest and brightest little place on the road, especially since the barn-faced buildings on either side seemed to dissolve away into mist the further they stretched out.  Much of the friendly cheer came exclusively from the dozens of guests about; at tables, in the street, spaced along the wall; all of whom seemed to be licking away at their perfect frozen treats with strong, unreal smiles.  Even the hot and powerful rays of the blazing sun, caught up in an astonishingly blue sky that was unobstructed by even a single puffy cloud, couldn't touch the smooth swirls of every delicious looking cone.
A man walked out of the storefront carrying two spiraled cones of the softest served ice cream ever conceived.  Dressed in summer shorts and a plain t-shirt with a pair of sunglasses to fight the day's brilliance, he maneuvered past the crowd of other patrons, careful not to spill a drop of his unmelting prize.  He brought his extra cone to one of the tables and charmingly placed it before a beautiful young woman who was leaned back in her chair with a smile, fighting the heat in a low-cut shirt whose straps clung tight over her red and crisp shoulders.
All about the tables and the wall, distantly familiar men and women laughed and chatted as they endlessly licked their unshrinking snacks.  They weren't the only guests though... apparently?  Ponies joined the laughter and frivolity with cones and bowls of their own.  Their bright coats and manes were great matches from the colorful summer wear of all the people around them.  It really was such an ordinary, unseasonably summer scene; an ordinary, absurd scene.
James' eyes never settled on anybody for long.  He had a hard time even picking himself up in his chair, let alone holding his eyes on level.  The spike that felt wedged in his brain was giving him the most splitting headache and it throbbed painfully, like some pony was hammering away on it with their hooves in a regular, wicked rhythm.  An untouched, familiar cone of chocolate ice cream was perched on the table in front of him and he longed to reach out and grab it, hoping that its perfect coldness could fight the torn sensation in his head.  But while every person and pony about him could wave their hands and hooves in wild and broad gestures, his were as frozen as the treat before him.
"Don't get much better than this, I reckon," Applejack suddenly crooned.
She was across the table from him, with her hat set aside and a bowl before her filled with some variety of pink, berry ice cream seasoned with oats.  Like every last drop of ice cream in the court, hers seemed to be untouched despite all the clear indications that she had been snacking away at it.  Was she even sitting there a moment ago?
Headache... headache...
"Try some, Beanstalk!" she generously invited, flush with a homely warmth.  "Might help you deal with all this summer sun!"
"It's... it's autumn...," James tried to insist, distraught.
It was supposed to be anyway.  All this hot air burned.  It was boiling.  He could feel the sweat pooling into whatever heavy clothes he was wearing.  And there was some kind of weight dangling from his leg, growing heavier.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Don't usually see a crowd like this here!" Applejack whistled, impressed.  She took in the sun for a moment, twisting her neck back and forth and swinging her blond mane about.
"Where are we?" he asked again, almost angry.  The raw, grinding noise that moaned inside his aching head spilled into his voice, flavoring it with an aggressive darkness.
Not that the serene pony had seemed to notice.  "Come on, now!  Ya've hardly touched yours!  Sweet of you to invite me for a dish and all but it ain't right if I'm the only one enjoying myself!  Dig in, Beanstalk!"
At last, he felt his trembling hand come up and start to reach out over the table.  But he couldn't make it.  The icy chocolate cone ahead was just infinitely far away, out of his grasp.  So far.  And the burning!  He was on fire.  The ice cream sat still as crystal while he melted in this sun.
Still shaking uncontrollably, his hand came back and felt about his leg, groping for the weight which was still only growing.
"Think maybe there might be a good day to hit Waterblast Park this week?" wondered Applejack.
"I told you... you?  I told you...," James hissed lowly, "it's closed."
At last his hand dropped onto the heavy weight.  The familiar, heavy weight.  Trim and conformed snuggly to his strong grip, it was the handle of his tactical knife.  It was ice cold.  So refreshingly cold.  He squeezed it tightly.  The chill it gave off ran up his arm.
"No need to be all grouchy about it!" the farm pony laughed brightly, untaken by any offense.  "Though, that's a real dang shame about it.  Great place.  Lots of memories, am I right?"
"Yeah," James responded, intentionally distracting.  He couldn't pry his hand off the grip of his knife.  He didn't... he didn't really want to.  Slowly he drew it out, holding it below the table.  The racing cold spread further through him, relaxing him, refreshing him.  Freeing him.
"You remember that time, 'bout when you were eleven I think," Applejack prattled on, "that you got there with your folks all excited and everything, but when you went in they had shut down the wave pool?  All the people what worked there said there was some mechanical doohickey on the fritz but all the other children were whispering some rumor that a kid had DIED in the pool!"  She chuckled to herself sprightly.  "Silly li'l fillies... always like a contest with them.  Have to see who can spin the craziest tale, right?"
Again, James was false and distracting as he replied, "Yeah... crazy."
He brought his free hand up and laid it on the table, but it was shaking so badly that the whole setup rattled.  The table clanked and rumbled noisily from his uncontrollable vibrations.  Again, not that Applejack seemed to notice or care.  He squeezed the knife's grip so hard he that thought his hand would merge with it, and at last the wave of ice emanating from it soared through the rest of him.  Up to his head, blasting away the forgotten headache.  Down to his legs, steadying him firmly.  And into his other arm, which stopped vibrating immediately.  FULL.  CONTROL.
He picked up his head completely.  "You've got quite a strong neck," he whispered at the farm pony.  The biggest veins in her throat popped out at him, pulsing with a rich, warm blood.
"Oh, why thank you!" Applejack graciously accepted with a smile.  "I'm always telling Big Mac that if anypony tried to lasso me about it they'd be in for a mess of something unexpected!"
"Oh, you're welcome!  You're welcome!" he lied, keeping her going.
He could see it so perfectly.  The exact spot the slice would do the most damage.  The opening that would spill her blood all over that bowl of ice cream like strawberry syrup.
Everything started to crumble.  No shop.  No court.  No wall.  No guests but Applejack.  No table but his.
"Hey, hold still," he requested as he started to stand up.
He was hot again.
His sweat was all over his sheets and stained so deeply in the repurposed tablecloth he slept in that it reeked even to him.  His hair was so soaked that he thought in his waking confusion that he could have been swimming.  He had to sit himself up, if only to shake himself off.  Not that any of the vigorous shaking he did tossed the discomfort out of him.
This damn library again.  He was sitting on his bed in the darkness of the Ponyville library, failing through yet another night of sleep.  The clock on the wall ticked repeatedly, he thought he heard Spike shuffling about in his sheets on the upper level, and a glitter of moonlight streamed in through a high up window, its warm beam missing him completely.
"What the hell..."  He put his sweaty palms upon his drenched face and rubbed away.  Harder.  HARDER.  "What the hell, what the hell, what the hell...," he spat quietly.





With a heavy 'fwumph', Twilight dropped the last book upon the stack, jostling the whole table.  She double-checked her ultimate tower of tomes to make sure they were in order and then shuffled them away onto a cart with other similar piles, ready to be placed back where they belong.  It took a little doing but that handled sorting all the books for today.  Being out of town for a few days had thrown some things off schedule for everypony.  Sorting returned books was the least she could have done to ease Spike's burden.
Of course, she had plenty of her own return burdens too.  As enjoyable as travel and seeing new places was, the havoc it could wreak on all the regular rhythms of life was always so annoying.  She wished that time would have stopped back at home while she hadn't been there to experience it.  It was going to take so many extra hours to get back on schedule.  She quickly tried to review everything in her head.  The presentation for the Ponyville Schoolhouse was in four days now?  It felt like it should be sometime next week.  Did she have any outside obligations for today that she hadn't canceled before she had left?  She needed to check if she should stock up on groceries.  Oh, she couldn't forget that she had to package up the books she had checked out from the Canterlot library so that she could mail them back before they were overdue.  And thinking about books, should she start from the beginning again on the tomes she had been studying before she left, just to refresh her perspective?
So much to do, so much to do.  But she'd get it done.  And it had been no problem taking the extra trouble to have done some of Spike's work since not only had the little guy earned it but it had given her time to think anyway.
For a good portion of the train ride back to Ponyville she had been processing what had happened at Hamestown with the Dryponies.  The meeting between the two long estranged sides had gone off without a hitch.  By the second day of reconciliation, more Dryponies from Heartwood had come out to see Hamestown and the frontiersponies had started to draw up adjustments to their plans in order to figure out how to account for the Dryponies' existence.  And all the while Princess Celestia had spoken to ponies one and all about the great hero Prideheart, finally being able to let free the painful tale that she had held close to her heart for centuries.  With the future of Equestria beyond the Pearl Peaks looking quite bright, and with a bounty of fond farewells, the unicorn and her friends had departed for home.
On the ride back she had pulled out a quill and parchment.  She had felt like there must have been something for her to have written down about the whole experience.  There almost certainly had been.  But it hadn't come to her immediately and she had left it be while she had mentally worked through the whole trip.
It wasn't like there had been much to do on the train anyway.  Everypony had seemed to be in a similar position of letting the experience sink in; they had all chosen to take the time to rest after their ordeal.  Plenty of naps from Rainbow Dash, quiet afternoon teas for Fluttershy, James... had been in his room a lot... and so forth.  The train ride back had been far quieter than the ride there.  She had been so sure that, if nothing came to her on the train, she would have been able to write a grand report to Princess Celestia once they had gotten back.  But whether it was the exhaustion of travel or just the fact that she had talked to the Princess so recently, even when they had arrived in Ponyville last night she hadn't felt compelled to write anything and subsequently had gone to bed with the page still blank.
Now that quill and parchment sat on a table off to the side, still ready to be used.  And it still didn't feel like there was anything to write.  Something was missing.
Since it couldn't be helped, she left it alone some more and went to get something to eat.
Only, as she passed through the main chamber to get to the kitchen, she spotted James.  He was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall.  The sunlight danced into the room from a window that sat embedded over his head, the gleaming light drifting over him and striking him only in shadowed reflection.  Two of Twilight's loaned books were on the floor next to him, mostly discarded, and the third sat in his cross-legged lap opened to some page or another.  The unicorn doubted he even recognized what page he was on; by the way his head was hung it seemed like his eyes were passing right through the book.
He was so thoroughly drained.
She bit her lip.  Was now the time to approach him?  Was she right to have left him be before?  Was Princess Celestia right; it wasn't within her power to deal with this and her efforts would be better spent finding somepony else who could, lest she try herself and only wind up increasing his agony?
"Hey," she finally greeted pleasantly, stepping a little closer but mindfully keeping some distance.
James shivered and looked up for a fleeting moment before eventually responding, "... Hey."
"I'm going to be honest with you," Twilight said gently, "you do not look good."
"I'm fine," came his predictable reply.  He shifted up where he sat and repositioned the book in his lap, trying to look busy.  But still it was obvious that the words on the pages were melting away from his eyes and he was staring into nothing.
"You always are," the unicorn lightly let up with a tiny, saddened shrug.
"Yeah... that's right," he said, slightly confused.  "I always am."
For several long moments the dust idly drifted about in the beam of light that spilled in through the window.
"But you're obviously not," worried Twilight.  The distress she carried revealed itself fully through her face and voice, like the paced drawing of a curtain.  She still didn't approach any closer to him, fearful of intimidating him like before, but she earnestly wished and desperately prayed that the sincere concern that flooded out of her wasn't sweeping straight over him like the light from the window was.
For a long while she was left standing there.  He didn't look up; he didn't look at his book; he didn't look at anything.  It couldn't be read if the painful silence that engulfed him was consideration, or surrender, or bleak and utter despondency.
At last, hoarse in voice and incredibly softly, he hinted, "... Just some stupid dreams."
Twilight wanted to leap at the small opening he had given but she immediately chastised her brain to not get ahead of itself.  She may have been direly wishing for progress but such hasty exploitation of the only meaningful opportunity she had gotten so far was exactly the way to crush her chances without accomplishing anything.  Instead, she carefully offered, "Want to talk about it?"
"No," he merely answered, dark and heavy.
Well, poop.  But no, she had still been right.  Any reckless forcing of the matter by her would have just made it turn out like before; perhaps he would have stormed out again.  It was supremely discouraging though, battling him and all his despair on one front while at the same time fighting with her own frustration and sympathy on the other.
Trying not to let her more negative feelings control the sound of her words, she confronted him, "Look... this isn't a complaint (or at least not completely one,) but just the raw truth: I can't help you if you don't want to be helped.  No matter how much I try, I won't be able to do anything if you don't decide for yourself that you want to get better.  Ultimately, there isn't any real point in me trying at all if you're not going to work with me."  A sigh forced its way out of her and she used the moment to double-check herself.  Steady and in control, she insisted, "But I do WANT to try... because I do care.  And... if I can't convince you to want help, then... I can stay away..."  Her head lowered far down, both sad and humble.  "Maybe... maybe that is the best possible thing I can even do for you.  But, understand... PLEASE understand... that when I told you before that I HAVE to care, I really meant it.  I can't NOT care.  I can't.  That's not going to change even if I have to stay away and do nothing."
Again the air froze about him, like at any moment he was about to be encased in ice and become unreachable.  Even James' breath was a little frigid when he finally spoke, "Just... not sleeping well, is all.  Crazy, pointless dreams keeping me up.  It's nothing; stop worrying."
"It really seems like it's more than that to me.  After all, it can't be 'pointless' if it's enough to keep you up," Twilight pressed delicately.  But even with the extreme softness of her pressure, she quickly felt terrified that she had stepped over the line and hastily invited, "But- but do go on.  Dreams about what?"
"Nothing.  It's stupid," he tried to insist.
"Well, what do you usually dream about then?" she innocently asked instead.
"Nothing," he repeated, more strained.  On a tired whim, he elaborated, "Just... random memories... random people and places and scenarios arranged randomly... it's always senseless and meaningless."
"So... something's different then?  It's not so random anymore?" guessed Twilight.
James shuffled uncomfortably.  He was partly angry, feeling like she had tricked some information out of him that he hadn't wanted to give up but also recognizing how freely he had surrendered it.  He sealed himself up and grimly hissed, "No.  It's still just as pointless."
"But it MUST be different somehow if it's bothering you like this now and it never did before," the wary unicorn continued to push with attempted fragile precision.  "Or maybe it's not something different with your dreams but something different about you?"  She could see what little willingness he had to cooperate evaporate with each word she put out, and as she went along it was like every one of her own words were dipped in that much more sympathetic outreach.  Before it became too late, she tried asking again, "What are you dreaming about?"
"Nothing," he said yet again, hard and removed.  But this time in his voice there had been slightly less insistence and slightly more... pleading?  As if disturbed by his own answer, he rambled on, "I'm just... off my game.  I've been thrown for a loop and am still adjusting is all... or it's probably some... latent PTSD or something.  It doesn't... it doesn't matter."
Twilight brought a leg over her mouth and nose for a brief moment to hold in a snort.  She wasn't sure why she felt like she was going to, and she wriggled with guilt about even feeling it, but there was something just particularly silly about his disjointed babbling.  A colt and his excuses...
When she had herself mostly under control, she spoke as seriously as she could manage, "That sounds kind of like something you should see a doctor about."
"I'm not going to see a doctor!" James nearly shouted, sitting up straighter.  He fell back immediately though and cast whispered, dreary words away from the unicorn, "Especially not some magical pony quack who... who probably doesn't understand the first thing about human biology... or psychology..."
"I'm sorry," she truly apologized, "I just mean that... if you're not well and you're not going to see a doctor... then the best you're going to get is us."
"I told you, I'm fine!" he grumbled.  He slammed shut the book in his lap, perhaps not quite as hard as he could have, and he almost tossed it aside before he decided to simply plant it haplessly onto the other two.  "I'll get over it.  I always have."
"I know that's what you believe," Twilight whispered, "and that I, myself, don't believe it.  We could go back and forth on that forever.  But..."  She really pulled herself into his eyes, for at least the few moments that he had them up.  "... Don't you think that... you've never really faced something like this before?  That whatever you're up against isn't like any time in the past?  Maybe whatever it is that you're trying to do won't be enough?  Maybe you could-"
"No!" he interrupted, boiling at last.  "I'm fine, I don't want to talk about it, thanks."
"Okay," she instantly acknowledged with a dismal nod, taking a few steps back.  She hoped that by leaving first he wouldn't have the reason to make his own retreat like before.  Backing out, she turned around.  But before she went anywhere she looked halfway back to him and began to say aloud, wispy and soft, "Sometimes I think..."
James looked halfway at her too.
"... I think that... if you could only see with my eyes; see what I'm seeing; then you'd get how I feel.  Then maybe you'd understand... why I'm worried.  Then you'd know that I'm right... but... am I right?"  She looked straight on again, away from him.  "Then I think that maybe the problem could be that I need to see with your eyes instead?  I don't know if I can do that though...  I don't know if it's in me."
A despondent sigh flitted out of her.  She confessed, "I don't know what to do, James.  But I don't want that to mean that I'll do nothing... out of fear or hopelessness or confusion.  I WILL do nothing if I really become convinced that that's the best decision I'm capable of... but right now I'm not there yet.  Right now I want to try.  I want to try my best... and that's all that I can do."
From behind her, his voice came up weak and subdued, "... Why are you even worried about it?  Don't be."  And then, buried in murky guilt and a dim whisper, "I'm sorry that... that my whatever is bugging you."
A little surprised, Twilight partially turned herself about and glanced at him once more.  He still was only halfway staring at her.  She warmly responded, "Don't be sorry.  I really think that... that you're trying your best too.  In some way.  I'm just concerned that your best isn't going to be enough, without support or without a change."
He sat unmoved.
Nodding once more, she turned back again and tried to leave him with a final thought, "I feel like I understand you much better than when we first met...  That wasn't even a month ago yet, was it, heh?  But maybe I really don't understand you ENOUGH... or maybe I can't?  Or maybe it doesn't matter at all?  It's just... not me that you want to hear things from..."
She suddenly asked, loud, honest, open, and clear, "You know who you should talk to?"
James squinted, full of a hesitant and dubious surprise.
"Applejack."  The air rung with a pure, reverberating echo of truth.  The man could try all he wanted to believe in shadowy acts of deception but it wouldn't pierce the straight sincerity of the unicorn's thought.
The sunlight coming in through the window shifted a little inwards as the sun moved, striking his knee.
"She's been worried about you just as much as I have," Twilight reasoned unabashedly, "and she's tried to be nothing but patiently supportive.  And... she tells it like it is.  She won't hold anything back.  No matter what you talk with her about; no matter what you ask her, she'll give it back to you straight, exactly as it is.  No more; no less.  And you understand you can honestly trust that."
"I'm not looking to pester anybody," James hummed in excuse.
"Oh, she won't see it as pestering," she assured him.  Then in a bout of mild sadness she added, "I mean... I know I wouldn't.  We both care, after all."
She shook her head.  With nothing more to add, she finally began to walk away.  "If you need anything at all, you can come get me, okay?  Take care," she called back to him.
He sat quietly.  She was already gone when he inaudibly replied, "Take care..."





"Aw, come on!  You ain't sore just cause ya had a few days of extra work?" Applejack asked, slightly smarmy and with a hearty laugh.
"Nnnope," Big Mac dryly replied.  He tossed the load of apples off his back and the basket slammed into the ground with a mighty crash.  The apples within bobbled about over themselves, luckily not turning into mush from the excess force.
"Can't hide it from me, big brother!" she charmingly accused him as she set down her own load, "I saw the way you were bucking today; getting out some extra frustration and all.  I told ya, I wouldn'ta gone if'n it weren't important!  Orders of the Princess and all!"
"Eeeeyup," he seemed to agree.  Whether his reply had been baked with sincerity or sarcasm was something only his sister could have distinguished.
"Hey, if you're gonna be such a grump about it I don't mind pulling some extra weight for a time you know!" she promised cheerfully.  "Really, it might help me get back into the swing of things."
His thoughtful response rolled out slowly, "Mmmnnnope."
"Oh, now you're just being fussy," Applejack laughed.  "You go on and take yourself a break and I'll-"
As she looked over the sweeping orchards of their farm to assess how much of her brother's share she would take on, she easily picked out an anomaly.  Far out there, just on the other side of the fence, somepony- someBODY was sitting on the ground, their back towards the farm.
"Hold the hay.  Hm..."  She squeaked back at her sibling with regret, "Looks like you'll have to carry on for now, Big Mac.  We've got a visitor and I really think I should go deal with'em."  She took off, racing to cross through the orchard, hollering back at him, "I promise I'll make it up to ya!"
"Eeeeyup," the stallion moaned, roughly tapping a nearby basket with his hoof and jostling the load.
Applejack charged through the spacious field of short apple trees, a far cry from the dense jungle out at Hamestown, and in no time she made it to the white fence at the borders of the property.  James was sitting on the dirt road just beyond, his back to her, one knee up and the other leg stretched out.  A cold silence radiated off of him.
Somewhat in the dark on what this could be about but at least having her own suspicions, she pulled up to the fence, alongside but still behind him, and draped her forelegs over the top bar.  "Out and about, Beanstalk?" she greeted down to him.
"Yeah," he idly replied without looking up.  He had heard her noisy approach.  "Aren't you happy?" he asked, subtly wry.
"Well not when you say it like that!" the farm pony easily countered.
Her straight, unfiltered honestly drew a short, dry laugh out of him.  He followed up aimlessly, "Twilight was being- she... I thought it was best that I get out of that place."
"By the way you was waiting, seems more like you wanted to come see me," Applejack took a nearly blind shot.
She knew she had hit something by the way he shook with surprise.  However, a dark mood swiftly swung over him and he brutishly snorted, "So I shouldn't have come then, huh?"  Planting a hand firmly on the ground, he started to push himself up.
"Sit yourself down!" she commanded, somewhat offended by his attitude.
He obeyed, but hardly out of sense of threat or respect.
"Of course you can come see me," she laid out acutely.  "Didn't I give you the Apple family welcome?  You can come here anytime you like."  She leaned more of her weight onto the fence and precisely asked, "Question is: why are ya here?"
"Does it matter?" James barely retorted.
"No," Applejack replied, plainly and simply.  But then she immediately added on in the same tone, "And yes.  Any reason and no reason you can find yourself here.  But..."  Again, with calculated precision, "Today you have a reason.  Can't hide that, Beanstalk."
He rested a hand up on his raised knee and didn't respond, looking away.
"Did Twilight send you?" she immediately assumed.  He hadn't been to this farm once that wasn't her doing.
"Why is THAT important?" the man responded in an upset snarl.
But the farm pony pushed back with equal force, "It's important cause I'm not gonna pry if it'll hurt her in the end.  But, if she's given the okay, well then I'll say whatever I dang well feel like!"
James stiffened up, battered by her frankness.  "And if I don't want you to pry?" he asked, strongly emphasizing himself.
"Well then we're not in agreement there," Applejack quipped.  Her eyes narrowed at him and her lips curled, and she stated, "You know, it seems to me Beanstalk that a lot of stuff you don't personally want has been happening to ya lately, and I'm afraid that you're only in for more of it before it gets better.  Don't like the sound of that I reckon but you're gonna be as stuck as a wagon wheel in deep mud if you don't accept it."
He fell silent, looking away from her.
"Twilight sent you," she said affirmatively.
No response came from the man.
"Thought so," the farm pony mumbled.  She gripped the fence and vaulted herself over the long obstruction.  Once on the other side, she dropped herself down right next to him and sat staring out at Ponyville just like he was.  "You gonna tell me what all this fussing and puffing and trouble is about?" she invited him to share.
Still he was locked up tight, and he only turned his head away some.
"S'alright.  I can guess," shrugged Applejack.  She deliberately let the air settle into a brittle stillness before she broke it with a sudden, ordinarily spoken, "You're jealous Rainbow got the one up on Broken Oak and you didn't."
"What?!" James rapidly came back in, looking at her with disbelief.
Batting a clever wink at him, she said, "Ahehe, I knew that'd get ya.  At least you're listening."
He stared doubtfully at her for a split second, again annoyed at these ponies' sheer... human... ability to defy expectations.  He quickly snapped out of it, harumphed, and looked away again.
"Aw, don't go pouting," the farm pony complained in a friendly fashion.  "Listen, I'm not making light of your issues, okay?  I mean that.  But I can only work with what you give me."  She corrected her posture as a steady seriousness soared straight into her.  "So," she stated directly, "give me something."
She waited patiently for him to respond and it paid off nearly a full minute later when, still not looking at her, he finally conceded enough to ask, "... You ever have strange dreams?" 
"Probably," she let up briskly.  "Not that I remember, though.  Too many orchards to buck come morning."
James blew a puff of hot air, already regretting even the little bit he had surrendered to her.  "See?" he said dismally, "You don't understand.  So you can't help."
"Listen up, Beanstalk!" the farm pony suddenly shouted with a stamp.  She poured out an honest authority, drawing a line in the sand.  "I know you've been through something big and terrible, something none of us here can exactly empathize with, something we can't quite understand the way that you do.  I ALREADY KNOW THAT."  She pointed a hoof at him while she leered.  "But!  BUT!  If you act one more time like that means we can't or shouldn't care about you, or that there's nothing we can do, or that it isn't worth doing anything over and you have the right to just drag your hooves on and on and on and on, or any of that dim-headed malarkey, then I swear I'll get a lasso, hogtie you up, and drag you through so much dirt Rarity is going to cry when she sees what's happened to her precious outfit."
The man turned to her, stunned; caught completely off guard by the dressing down he was receiving.  For all the encounters he had seen so far of Applejack, he knew that she certainly was a straight shooter but he also felt that she was always POLITE.  But-  No... wait...  There had been that whole encounter with Gadget, where she had been really pushed into a foul attitude.  She had never turned to utilizing... real, hostile rudeness, but her manners had indeed begun to wear thin.  It had been a strange sight to see two ponies fighting with passion.  Grumpy passion, maybe, but still passion.  And, especially after the Drypony ordeal, he should have known by now that ponies were capable of the most serious depths of feelings.
It was hardly necessary for her to be so grouchy to him though.  It was like with Gadget again: Applejack had some justified grief against the repairpony but she had also still been partially in the wrong.  Of course, the repairpony had invited some of the farmpony's anger too... and even when she had been so agitated she had also been so unfailingly honest...  Gadget had been... actually doing something wrong... in order to draw her force out... just like now... he...
Applejack hardly took a break as she continued on, "Now, sorry if that's a little rough but I've been waiting and waiting for you to do right and get back on your hooves, but I'm just not seeing it happening!  Even when we go through some craziness out in the woods where you liven up and do some real good, once we're out of there POW everything goes back to the same old sittin' on your rump and feelin' sorry for yourself.  And it's only been weeks of the same ridiculous silliness is what I hear from Twilight."  Her own mention of the unicorn's name reminded her.  Her ire sharpened, her power held back just a little less, and she carried on, "Oh and speaking of, I especially turned around on the matter of my patience when I saw what your doggone pigheaded pity party was all doing to poor Twilight!"
Something about what she said cut into James.  The force of her truth pierced the great shroud of misery, self-deception, and escape that had been fogging his mind.  It was like, for a brief instant, he could see with a different pair of eyes.  And what he saw was a unicorn buried under weights of friendship and worry.
"She's been in bad, worried for ya!" the farm pony didn't slow down.  "Not the least of which is from being told to care for ya by the Princess, AND the most of which is on account of her being an amazing friend.  Now, she knows you the best of all of us and for whatever reason she REALLY believes in you.  And I mean that like true.  I can tell that, and I'll take that for what it's worth, but now I think it's about time that I see some evidence for why myself."  She stood up, tall and determined, and whirled towards him while he still stared helplessly back at her.  "So," she demanded, "are you going to take a good, long, hard, honest look at yourself and figure yourself out; give me something to know what's really going on in there?  Or am I going to have to dig it out of you?  Cause I mean it when I say I care, Beanstalk, but that includes caring about Twilight.  And what happens to you, happens to her.  So, spill."
She bore her eyes into him, a heavy and down-turned frown on her face.
As James stared back, shivering, he slowly drew he other leg up.  He clutched his arms around his raised knees and then buried his face in them.  He sat like that under her unmoving gaze for several seconds before, through a beginning flow of tears, he murmured, "I don't understand anything that's been happening..."