//------------------------------// // Day 22: Apple Bloom/Apple Bloom (grimdark) // Story: March-makers // by ObabScribbler //------------------------------// Title: Prisoner of the Past Pairing: Apple Bloom/Apple Bloom “I can’t believe it.” “Believe it, sugarbud.” “But it’s … it’s impossible! Princess Twilight said it’s impossible!” The older mare sat down, sending up wisps of straw. “Twilight never did tell y’all the truth about how Starlight became her protégé, did she?” “Student,” Apple Bloom corrected. “Starlight Glimmer is Princess Twilight’s student.” “Oh, yeah, right.” The older mare nodded. “Y’all are still at that stage, ain’t you?” “Huh?” “Never mind.” She waved a grubby hoof. “Time travel stuff.” Time travel. Apple Bloom had heard the story of how Princess Twilight once tried to warn her past self of some future woe, but she had never thought she would someday meet her own future self. She was just an earth pony after all – one stunningly talented at potions, but actual spellcasting? “Did Sweetie-Belle-?” “No!” Her older self’s brow crinkled in a mask of pain. It smoothed out in less than a second, but Apple Bloom recognised the expression from hours of looking at herself in the mirror, wondering whether her parents would have been ashamed of their blank flank daughter. She hadn’t seen that expression in two years, but she still knew it for what it was, added wrinkles or not. “No,” her older self said again, calmer this time. “Sweetie Belle didn’t cast this spell. I did.” “For real?” “Uh-huh.” “Wooooow.” Apple Bloom hopped down from the hay bale. “I gotta go tell Applejack! She’s gonna lose her mind when she sees you! Not to mention Big Mac – he might even say a whole sentence in shock!” Her older self blinked. “Oh my gosh … I forgot about them … how in Celestia’s name could I forget they were still …?” “Huh?” She shook her head. “Never mind. You can’t tell ‘em I’m here. I ain’t got much time.” “What?” Apple Bloom stared at the weather-beaten mare, wondering what had possessed her to cut her mane so ugly and short. Why, in places it looked almost shorn, like she was some kind of sheep. And was that … a tattoo? “I get a tattoo!?” It slipped out before she could stop it. Her older self instantly clapped a hoof to her neck. “Fuck.” Apple Bloom’s eyes rounded. Even several years after getting her cutie mark, nopony allowed her to curse like that. “Uh … dang it, I should’ve … fuck. You weren’t supposed to see that.” Apple Bloom’s stomach tightened at the frustration in her older voice. “You … you ain’t here just for a visit, are you?” The hoof sagged and fell to the barn floor with a hollow noise. “No, sugarbud. I ain’t. I’m here to … to prevent a great tragedy.” “What?” Tears formed at the edges of her older self’s eyes. “Someday I’m … you’re … we’re gonna get … cocky. We’re gonna try an’ prove we’re just as good as unicorns at magic.” She blinked, sending the tears skidding down her soot-stained cheeks. “It ain’t gonna go well. We’re gonna … hurt someone. Someone important. An’ it’s gonna have consequences we ain’t able to deal with.” She opened her eyes, but her focus was somewhere in the middle distance. “Consequences nopony can deal with. Not really. We aimed higher than we could reach an’ … someone else … someone real important paid the price for our arrogance.” A ball of tension began to twist up Apple Bloom’s insides. She was suddenly very aware of how far the barn was from the house. “So … you came back to warn me? Like Princess Twilight came back to warn her past self?” “Kinda.” Apple Bloom took a step back, towards the ladder down from the hayloft. She could jump it. Maybe. “K-kinda?” Her older self reached into one saddlebag. The other was blackened from fire damage, too useless to contain anything. She pulled out a long, crystalline object with a gently pulsing sphere at its tip. “I’m sorry, sugarbud. I loved bein’ you. I loved it so much. I love the you I used to be … but we ain’t safe. We’re too reckless. I went back so many times, but we always do sumthin’. We always hurt … or kill … someone … so this is the only way to be sure we don’t wreck everythin’ for the ones we love.” Apple Bloom turned to run. She made it to the top of the ladder before she heard a ‘ching-whoomph’ behind her. When the magical blast hit her, every muscles in her body convulsed. She reared back, instinctively trying to get away from the pain. Her mouth opened in a scream that never came. And then there was no more pain. There were no more muscles, or bones, or streaming ribbon trailing behind her. The battle-scarred mare watched the blackened outline fade away. There wasn’t even any dust. She liked to think she could feel the timelines shift and break apart. This one was on a better path now. Her exit from it was also sealed. She could return to the future, but it would not be the one she left. Her future existed somewhere else, in a different timeline she could no longer access. “There ain’t no place for a pony like me in this one,” she muttered as she turned the crystal wand on herself. Moments later, all that existed of any Apple Bloom were quickly drying tearstains on the hayloft floor and the plaintive voices of her siblings calling for a sister who would never come home.