March-makers

by ObabScribbler


Day 14: Golden Harvest/Braeburn (sadfic)

Title: Doing the Right Thing

Pairing: Golden Harvest/Braeburn


Golden Harvest toed the soil and frowned. “I’ll never be able to grow anything in this.”

“Sure you will!” The clip-clop of hooves here sounded so much dustier than in Ponyville. “How else do you think we grew all them apple trees?”

She glanced at the thin, spidery trees edging the field she had been given as her own. Grammy Apple Tart had given her one to eat when she first got off the train as a ‘Welcome to Appleloosa’ gift. It had been iron-hard and dried out her mouth.

“Goldie?” Braeburn’s voice wavered a little, his natural buoyancy not taking the word all the way to its conclusion. “Sumthin’ wrong?”

Everything. “Nothing.” I should never have come here. “Just glad to be here.” She gave him her best smile.

Evidently her best wasn’t good enough. He frowned at her, his eyes were soft with concern. Guilt blossomed within her like a water pipe stuck full of holes. Or maybe that was something else inside her. Her body felt so strange these days, like she was trying on somepony else’s skin and it was little too big for her.

“You ain’t glad to be here,” he said quietly.

“Yes I am.” She turned up the wattage on her smile. “You’re here.” That was enough. It had to be enough.

“Yeah.” He raised a hoof as if to place it on her shoulder, but changed his mind at the last moment. It hung between them, dangling uselessly. “I am.” He put the hoof back down. “But you don’t need to be. Not really.”

“What?” Panic ribboned through her.

“This ain’t the right life for you,” he sighed. “I guess I kinda knew that. I just hoped… well, I don’t matter a whit what I hoped. You ain’t gonna be happy here. I could tell from the moment you set foot in this town that you weren’t gonna be happy. You ain’t built for life on the plains.”

She hobbled towards him. “You’re talking crazy –”

“No, I ain’t,” he interrupted. “Goldie … I told you right from the start that I couldn’t leave this town. My family’s here. I’m an Apple. Apples built Appleloosa. It’s my sweat, tears an’, yeah, blood in these here houses and fences. I spent my best years buildin’ this place up.”

“And I told you I wouldn’t make you leave it,” she protested. “I know how important your family is to you!”

“It is.” He closed his eyes. “Family’s the most important thing in the world to me.”

Her eyes were starting to burn. She gulped back tears. “So you’re sending me back to Ponyville? What if I refuse to go?” She stamped her forehoof.

His eyes flew open. “Don’t do that!”

“I can do whatever I damn well please, Braeburn Apple! You don’t get to tell me what to do!” She lowered her head as if to butt him like one of those buffalo she had seen running the outskirts of town. “You don’t make my decisions for me. I make them for myself. And you certainly don’t get to send me away because I’m inconvenient.”

“You … what? That ain’t it at all! I’m tryin’ to do what’s best for you.”

“No you’re not! You’re trying to do what’s best for you!”

“Goldie, please, I’m thinkin’ of you an’ -”

“Donkey dung!” she yelled. Crows started up from the ugly treeline. “If you were trying to do what’s best for me you never would have slept with me in the first place!”

Like a useless hoof, silence dangled between them.

Golden Harvest sank to her haunches. “I …” She was shocked at her own words. Had she meant to say that? Had she even meant to think it? “I’m sorry –”

“No.” Braeburn turned his face away like he had been slapped. “You’re right. I made dang poor choices from the start.” He blew out a breath. “Things … weren’t meant to turn out this way.”

“No,” she agreed, her voice now bereft of emotion. “They weren’t. But this is how things are. We agreed we’d try to do the right thing.”

“An’ this is the right thing?” He gestured vaguely, his hoof taking in the pitted ground, trees, distant town and all the mountains and valleys beyond. “You uprootin’ your whole life an’ comin’ here? Leavin’ your home behind? Puttin’ yourself someplace that clearly makes you unhappy?”

“I … thought it was,” she admitted. “But I thought it more like ‘building a new life’.”

“A new life when you were happier with your old one.”

“Things change.”

“That they do,” Braeburn granted. He rubbed at his face, knocking the brim of his hat with an accidental ‘thunk’ noise. “I never should’ve drunk cousin AJ’s hard cider at her birthday party.”

“Regrets don’t help anything.”

“No. Still got ‘em though.”

She knew that better than anypony. She regretted going outside with Applejack’s handsome cousin to look at the stars. She regretted letting him put his hooves around her. She regretted waking up the next morning and realising she had crossed a line she could never uncross.

“You don’t love me, Goldie,” Braeburn murmured, so softly she could barely hear him.

“You don’t love me either.”

He hesitated before nodding. “So what’re we doin’ with ourselves?”

“We’re doing the right thing.”

“An’ that is?”

I don’t know. I never knew. I was just guessing from what other ponies do and hoping somepony would tell me if it was right or wrong. “Living with the consequences.”

He stared at her then; stared with the intensity that would not abate if he was given a thousand years to let it soften and mould into something kind and sure. It was almost obscene. Braeburn Apple was a kind and sure stallion to his core. He cared about his loved ones. He did his best. He looked after those who needed it and never shirked from his responsibilities. He had never once said no to her – never denied her. He had owned up. He had done his best in a bad situation. He had tried to do the right thing.

Golden Harvest felt the first tear rolling down her dusty cheek. And the second. The third and fourth and fifth and all those that came after blended together until the fur on her face was sodden.

I want to go home.

I am home.

This isn’t my home.

I have to make it my home now.

Why? Why do I have to?

Because he can’t leave. Because this town needs him too much. Because it’d crumble without its sheriff.

I could move back to Ponyville. I could do this alone. Other mares do this alone.

I’m scared to be alone.

I want my mommy.

I am –

Braeburn’s kind, sure forelegs closed around her. He held her close and let her sob herself raw against his shoulder.

“Shhh, shhh, let it all out, darlin’,” he whispered. “It’ll be okay.”

No it won’t.

She cried harder, her swollen belly not letting him pull her any closer to him.