When The Mare Comes Around

by nanashi_jones

That's The Truth

I stared at Jim. He was face down in his own blood, which was soaking into the carpet as I watched.

I heard Trenton move. My brain got back in gear. Kicking free of the ropes, I rolled under the bed.

“Oh for-”

More gunfire. Two more shots. Too close. I kept moving. I belly-crawled across the carpet and popped out the other side.

“You fucking-”

I turned. Everything went slow.

We faced each other with only a stretch of carpet between us. He had a revolver, snub-nose and well-cared for. This one wouldn’t misfire. His face was contorted in hate directed right at me. His arm shook slightly.

Time kicked back in. His finger tightened on the trigger. I ran at him. I felt like I was lurching, moving too slow, not fast enough. He had me at nearly point blank range. He couldn’t miss.

There was another roar.

I barrelled into him, plowing all my weight into his legs and I heard what sounded like a chorus of celery snapping all at once as we went down. Trenton howled. We fell into a tangle, and he tried to get the gun up. I slammed his hand with my head and he cried out, dropping it.

Still wrapped up in each other, he tried pounding on my back with his remaining hand. I got my forehooves between us and pushed off him.

Backing away, breath heaving, I eyed him warily. He lay on the ground, his legs not really in leg shape anymore. He glared at me, his own breathing heavy and ragged. As the pain caught up with him, tears filled his eyes and he started keening. He tried to pull his knees up.

I was alive. I waited for my own pain to catch up, but nothing came. My heart thudded in my ears. I took a breath. Then another. When I was no longer shaking from adrenaline, I checked myself over. I found my tail had lost some hairs, but otherwise, I was fine.

I blinked at the spot where the bullet had gone through my tail. I’d moved just in time. Any slower and the bullet would’ve struck my rump, or maybe my spine and that… I tried not to think about that.

I chuckled. “Dash can’t say I ain’t fast any more,” I said. Nervous laughter bubbled out of my lips. I clamped my jaw shut. I was giddy. I couldn’t be giddy right now. I needed to focus.

Going carefully over to Trenton, I found the gun nearby. I used my teeth to picked it up by the handle, release the cylinder and shake out the last bullet plus the casings. It took me a second, since I had a brief urge to use hands for what I needed.

As the bullets hit the floor, I saw they were twenty-twos. Memory flashed on Rachel’s dad telling her twenty-two’s were good bullets for headshots. Rachel told him thanks for the macabre info; she’d use it when she was in the mafia. Her dad had laughed.

My stomach tightened and I had to take another few breaths to steady myself. Trenton had meant to fill my noggin with lead.

Tempted to leave him here to be found whenever, I remembered all the noise his legs had made when I hit him. I sighed. I couldn’t just leave him there. Much as I wanted.

Turning, I found him glaring at me.

I gave him a sarcastic look in return.

I got closer to him, but not so close that he could take a swipe if he wanted. I didn’t need to get that close to see blood blooming on the pale slacks around his knees. I’d broken his legs at the knee. He needed professional help.

Maybe a unicorn or pegasus would have just bowled him over, but throw a full power earth pony at a human and it isn’t pretty. I briefly felt ashamed for hurting him, till I reminded myself he’d tried to freaking kill me.

“I got ya bad,” I said. “I gotta call nine-one-one.” I turned around.

“Don’t you fucking dare!” he screeched, his voice equal parts rage and pain.

I gave him a withering look.

“Buddy, for someone who just tried to kill me twice, if the last few days are anything to go by, you got a funny way of being grateful. So shut up and calm down. I don’t need you hurtin’ yourself further.”

He didn’t reply. I could tell his outburst had cost him. His breathing was unsteady as he glared at me. More tears welled up and out of his eyes, spilling down his face.

I turned to Jim and sighed. I went over to where he blocked the hotel room door.

“Jim?”

He didn’t respond.

I put my fetlock on his neck. I couldn’t find a pulse. His back wasn’t rising or falling. He was perfectly still.

“Dammit,” I said.

He didn’t deserve to get shot. He didn’t deserve to die.

Shaking from something entirely different from the earlier adrenaline, I went over to the nightstand and bumped it hard with my shoulder. The phone came tumbling down. I craned my head and heard a dial tone. I punched 9-1-1 with my nose. Picking up the handset in the crook of my fetlock, I tucked it against my head and waited.

“Sidney nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” came a professional, clipped woman’s voice.

“Is this a person?” I asked.

“Yes, Miss.”

“Kay. Uh, my name’s Applejack. I mean, Rachel. Something like that. I’m at a… hotel off a highway somewhere and I’ve just got out of being kidnapped and there’s a- there’s a man been shot and another man whose legs are all busted up,” I breathed.

“Are you alright, can you keep talking to me?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just here with… these guys.”

“Are they a threat to you, are you in any danger?”

I looked over at Trenton, who glared back.

“Just from dirty looks, ma’am,” I said.

“Okay. Okay, good. Can you give me any information on your location?”

“Sorry, no,” I said.

“Can you look out a window? It will help us narrow down where you are.”

“Can’t you, trace the line or something?” I asked. “This is a hotel phone.”

“We can, but if you knew then I could mobilize police and emergency units quicker.”

“Sure. Sure. Hang on,” I said.

I went over to the window and hopped up on the chair Jim had been using not that long ago. I shook my head and pulled the curtain open with my teeth.

I went back to the phone.

“Days Inn,” I said. “Bunch of trees. Highway. Make sure we get an ambulance,” I said, looking at Trenton. He’d rolled a little to his back, but he still glared at me. I’d never seen anyone look so pissed off in my life.

“Yes, that as well. Can you stay with me please?”

“Lady, I’m trying,” I said, realizing that tears were in my eyes.

“Are you injured? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m- I’m fine. Just traumatized as hell, y’know?” I barked a laugh that sounded dry in my throat.

“I know it’s bad. Just stay with me, okay?” the woman said, her voice edging from its clipped professionalism and close to something kinder. “Just stay with me and you’ll be okay.” I thought of Fluttershy.

“You remind me of a friend of mine,” I said. “Sweet. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Yes?” she said. “Who is she?”

“Fluttershy,” I said and hiccuped. I looked up at the ceiling.

“She sounds nice,” the woman said. She started saying something. It sounded like an address and she was talking to other people rather than me.

My ear twitched as I heard Trenton move around. It twitched again as I heard his hand fall on something. I turned to him. He was trying to reload the gun.

“Scuse me ma’am,” I said. “I’ll leave the line open, but I gotta take care of something.”

“Miss Shelton? Please-” I didn’t catch the rest as I put the phone on its side.

Going over to Trenton, who was trying to get a bullet in, I watched as he dropped it, swore and snapped his revolver shut. He pointed it at me. I gave him a thoroughly unamused look.

“You didn’t get it loaded,” I said.

“I did. It’s the next one,” he said, his teeth gritted.

“No, it’s not,” I said.

“You’re just saying that,” he said.

“Son, you are banged up to hell and I’ve heard steadier breathing from my granny after a marathon,” I said. “Which one of us do you think is worse off?”

He frowned, but glanced at his revolver.

“Put it down. It’s over. Whatever you’re trying to do it is well and truly over.”

“You should’ve stayed dead,” he whispered, his voice hot, his eyes brimming with pain and tears.

“Well, you shouldn’t have buried. Me. Alive!” I yelled.

He winced and I saw his breath catch.

“You don’t know,” he said.

“No, I don’t. But I’m not dumb and you’re acting like a freaking Bond villain here. So why don’t you just quit working yourself up?”

“I can still fix this,” he hissed, raising the gun again.

I glanced at it. Nice thing about revolvers- when you are not freaking out, you can tell if they’re loaded or not. Unfortunately, his revolver was. Fortunately, the bullet was far from next.

Still... he could twitch that trigger finger fast enough to make this a whole lot more complicated, so I needed to keep him talking.

I rolled my eyes at him. “You really can’t. What’s your game plan here? Shoot me and say it was self-defense?”

The look in his eye told me that was exactly what he thought.

“I have money,” he said.

“Congrats,” I said. “It doesn’t make up for a lack of sense. Think you can buy your way out of this? You already killed one guy. Killing me ain’t gonna make your problems go away, Bill.”

“Don’t call me Bill,” he hissed. “My name is William.”

“Fine. William. You shoot me, it’s just gonna make your life worse. Then you cover it up? It’s gonna be a hassle and all it will take is one bit of truth. One person who doesn’t care about your money. Like him over there.”

I pointed at Jim, who was still bleeding on the floor. The sight made my chest tighten, so I looked back at Trenton. It didn’t go away. If anything, it got bigger.

“He gave up your money. He weren’t no saint either. What makes you think you’ll be able to pay off honest folk?”

“I can. I can fix this,” Trenton said. He looked like he was talking to himself. “I told Dad I would. I… I promised him. I can fix this… It was just one party. I can take care of this.”

The look in his eyes said it all. He was completely deluding himself. No more disgust, no more tightly wound rage. He was hiding away in his head, building mental walls to keep from owning up to his actions.

I closed my eyes. When I opened them, I looked directly into the eyes of the man who’d tried to kill me.

“William Trenton,” I said in a sharp, authoritarian voice.

His gaze snapped to me.

“Stop lying to yourself,” I said. “And accept what you’ve done.”

“No…” he squeaked.

The tightness in my chest spiked, like something was trying to push its way out.

I leaned in close to him. If I had to, I could knock his gun down before he got it back up.

Boring my eyes deep into his, I said, “I know what you did, William. You can’t hide from me.”

He blinked. His gun hand hit the floor. He looked like I’d slugged him.

“It was just a party…” he whispered. “I’d- I’d done Leo’s stuff before. I’d driven before. It was just a party…” He blinked at me, like he was seeing me for the first time. He started to cry again.

“It wasn’t a party, William!” I roared. “You killed me!”

He shrank back, terror washing over him. “I didn’t! I didn’t! I...”

I held my stare. I put every ounce of judgment into that stare that I could because the little puke sack wasn’t getting away from me that easy.

“It was just an accident,” he whispered.

“Buryin’ me weren’t no accident!”

“I was scared!” he protested. “You looked dead! I just wanted to fix my mess. He- he always says I have to fix my messes… You weren’t supposed to be alive! You weren’t supposed to- to-”

He broke. From broken legs and failures- he broke. Like a wounded animal, he hunched inward and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

“Cry, cry, cry,” I muttered. I got the gun away from him and unloaded it one last time. I threw everything over by the nightstand.

“You screwed up and you’re gonna pay the piper for it,” I told him.

I don’t know if he heard me, but by that point, I’d said my peace. I went back to the phone.

“Hello?” I said, once I had the receiver back up.

“Miss… Rachel?”

“Yep. Sorry. You catch any of that?”

“I… Some of it. You have units on the way. Two minutes.”

“Great, great,” I said. “Hey is- Is this admissible in a court of law or whatever?”

“I’m not a lawyer.”

“Me neither,” I said with a dry chuckle.

“Police and other officials are en route to your location. Can you stay with me, please?”

“Sure,” I said.

I laid back, cradling the phone against me and looked over at the sobbing William Trenton.

Maybe I should have been angrier at him, but really I just pitied the man. He took every opportunity to do the honest thing, the right thing, and he shot it all to hell. Applejack had fought her fair share of monsters, but even they deserved more mercy than the broken mess bawling his eyes out not three feet from me.

I ignored Trenton and rolled my head to the side a little, looking at Jim’s body. I closed my eyes, trying to avoid the guilt that sprang up next to the tightness in my chest. Trenton dragged Jim in. And the P.I. made his own decisions when crunch time came. It wasn’t my fault he was bleeding all over a cheap hotel carpet. Of course, that didn’t change the fact I felt like it was.

Feelings like that are funny. They crop up when you’re out of folk to blame and just aim some at yourself. Applejack had been there before, when she blamed herself for her parents’ deaths.

She’d thought that because she wasn’t a good enough daughter, they’d been taken from her. She’d thought she was being punished. Fortunately, she’d told Granny Smith, who gently put some wisdom in little AJ’s head: just because a bad thing happened to a goody pony, it didn’t make that pony any less good. Given enough time, bad things happen to good ponies and good things happen to bad ponies in equal measure. The trick, Granny Smith had pointed out, was in knowing the difference between the two and knowing who you were so the good things could be let in and the bad stuff kept out.

It had been one of my first lessons in honesty: be honest with myself.

And if I was being honest, I was honestly done here. I just wanted to see my friends, see my family. I missed them terribly. I felt like I’d been doing too much alone lately. Which lead to the question, why did I have to go this alone? That was the dumbest call I ever made. I must’ve backslid and let my pride get in the way of my good sense.

May had been right. I should have gone to New York. I should have found my family and friends. I should have come back later to handle this with the right support. I shouldn’t have done it like this. One man was dead. Another had his legs busted in. And that’s not counting all the people back at the tavern who got their teeth kicked out over me.

Guilt swam over me and no amount of knowin’ truthfully where I was in the middle of all this would banish that feeling. I may have just been doing the best I could, but I knew I could have made some better calls too.

“You have any regrets?” I asked the operator, opening my eyes.

“Miss?” the operator said.

“I’m just- I feel like I made a whole mess of calls here and I’m looking at a body and this guy and…” I sighed, running a hoof through my mane. “I don’t know what to make of it.”

The operator went quiet for a moment. “You’re alive,” she said.

I blinked.

“Ma’am?”

“You’re alive, Rachel. That’s a lot right now.”

I could hear the sirens in the distance. The wail was getting closer. I looked up and out the window.

“I can hear the sirens,” I said.

“Good, good. Stay with me until they’re inside.”

“Okay,” I said.

I was alive.

As I let that sink in, the tightness in my chest, which had been growing this whole time, finally burst. I cried. I cried a lot. I hadn’t really cried since I dug myself out of the ground. That had been panicked, pain-filled crying. This was the opposite.

I wasn’t crying because I was scared and hurting in my soul. I was crying because I was happy to be alive.

Yeah, I’d have to live with my decisions, but I wouldn’t have to do it alone. I still had May. Maybe if I was lucky, I’d have Sam too. Then there was my family, back in Equestria, and here on Earth. And my friends. Twilight and Dash and Fluttershy and Pinkie and Rarity. And Max. I had friends all over.

When all that guilt was swimming through me, I thought I was alone and I’d have to suffer my faults that way too. But really, I had friends all over. Truth was, I didn’t have to do this alone.

Halfway into sobbing like a filly, I realized my tears weren’t hitting my fur any more because I could hear the soft plink of water on metal.

I blinked, clearing my eyes. I stared down. The Element of Honesty was around my neck.

I snorted, sniffed.

“How about that…” I said, as the sound of sirens got right on top of me.

“Miss? Rachel?” the operator said.

“Sorry, ma’am,” I said. “Name’s Applejack. I have the Element of Honesty around my neck to prove it.”

“Pardon?”

“Well, you can call me Rae Jay if you like,” I said with a chuckle.

Footsteps came. Fast, hard, and heavy, they stormed up the hallway. Support was coming. I wasn’t in this alone.

Comments

[Firebirdbtops]

That's about as good a combined name as any. Thinking of tracking down some relatives of the stiff on the floor?

[reader238]

well let us hope that none of those cops are papa supporters

[Flash_Magnus]

Poor Jim

[websterhamster]

Rae Jay... I like it.

[applebuckingAJ]

WOW you get 5 derpies

[Pinklestia]

Is finally over, but Discord still has to be defeated.

[PiMan]

I was thinking about merger names before this chapter. I'd come up with A-Rae.
Sounds like something Scooby Doo would say.

[Luckyfanisaac]

why did I have to do this alone?