Melancholy Days

by Zurock

Chapter 23: Truth

He wept. It was soft, particularly because his sorrow was pressed against the pants Rarity had designed and their comforting cushion absorbed the worst of what he gave. But James wept all the same. His body surrendered to rapid shudders and his lungs released short, gasped breaths and painful, tortured whimpers.

Applejack's mouth dipped sadly. She didn't regret having confronted him with the truth. It was probably the only way it could have gone in the end and it certainly was the only way she could have honestly acted, but that didn't make it any less of a reprehensible-feeling thing. Even when she truthfully told herself that he was only facing feelings that he had simply been keeping hidden, she recognized that she was the one who had drawn them out; the one who had forced him to feel these painful things that now dragged him down into despair. She didn't feel guilt free. But she had enough homely wisdom to know how necessary this all was. More importantly, seeing him like this served as another reminder to her of something very significant that she had to constantly remind herself of: he was a complicated being that she didn't completely understand.

She still wanted to forget the first time that she had ever saw him, though she doubted she ever would. That primal and fatal violence was frightening and nightmarish. She didn't want such a ghastly evil to be a part of any existence that she, or especially her friends, were a part of. But then later Twilight had come along and claimed that there was more to him than that one terrible item, and her friend's promise had been enough for her to wait for opportunities to see that truth for herself. So she had lent him an honest chance. And in time, slowly a bigger picture had indeed come into focus. She had personally always accepted that there would be dark spots with him, given that first terrible experience; unknown and shadowed things that she wanted to leave as dark spots even. But then there were experiences like the Drypony encounter, and things like this. Events that had showed her that there were parts of him that were the same as anypony else. Concerned and noble, caring and cautious, soft and frightened.

Most importantly, this showed her that Twilight had been right about him.

With an easy yet tired sigh she shifted into a more sympathetic attitude and sat back down, placing herself a little bit closer to the man than before and facing away from the farm again. She pushed her worn hat off her head and set it down on the dusty road before she looked at the man with her lips pulled back and her cheeks pushed out in a glum, uncertain expression.

"That certainly sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?" the farm pony gently opened. "Feelin' completely gone and lost like that. But imagine how much worse it would be if... if that were the case and ya never would believe it."

James seemed unchanged by her remark, still only crying quietly to himself.

But Applejack had faith that he was at least listening to her, as he had proven before when he had appeared so disaffected. She said with a warm confidence, "I don't think it's as bad as you say, though. Maybe it feels like that to you... just confusion and emptiness... but it's really... it's really more like you're just... stuck in a thorny patch of grass, taking all those cuts. You weren't doing yourself any favors by ignoring it so much. You really needed to wake up to it, Beanstalk. You really did."

His voice came out raspy from his tears and fuzzy from being forced through his blocking legs, and he said discordantly, "Everything's gone... everyone... they're all..." He wheezed a few times.

"I know...," the farm pony nodded consolingly. "I figured that's a lot of what it came down to. That all your... bad... inside probably came from that. Dunno why it never really seemed to occur to some of us... but... well... I dunno. Anyway, that's what I always felt would be the trouble." She tossed her caring, green eyes at him, a man still so balled up and frightened, and she shared truly, "I'm sorry for ya... I really am."

"You don't-" James tried to say, his face still stuffed in his legs as he practically choked on his emotions. "You don't... under- understand..."

"Oh hush. Hush now, Beanstalk." Her words weren't the hard commands that had come out of her before. They were the words of the tender friend that supported the ponies closest to her, or perhaps the loving sister that was a pillow of compassion for her younger sibling. "That's another thing you really need to wake up to. I mean it," she told him kindly. "Throw out your thinkin' that we're outside of this. Yeah, maybe I can't understand exactly what it feels like, but that don't mean I can't touch it. You think I don't care everything 'bout my folks?" she asked rhetorically. "Don't love my friends to pieces? I haven't lost them but I can still imagine the- I REALLY don't want to, understand - but I CAN still imagine the fringes of that nightmare."

James finally pulled his face up, red as it was from being pressed into his legs and with tears smeared all over it. Dribblings of snot had built up under his nose and he wiped the area clean with his sleeve while a sore sucking sound pulled the rest of the mucus back in. He waved his soiled arm about, already disgusted with himself for what he had done to Rarity's nice clothes. With a still unbalanced voice that was constantly interrupted by spontaneous gasps, he said, "It's more- it's more than... than that."

"Sure," Applejack immediately and fully accepted. "I'm sure that with everything taken out from under you... you don't feel grounded anymore, maybe? Hm..." She fell deep into some personal thought, prying open the lid on a level of understanding that she had always known but had never looked into.

"You know," she came back up with a bit of surprise, "I can kind of understand that a little better than the rest, actually."

Though he still sat facing forward, sniffling ever more, the man shifted his eyes curiously towards the pony.

"Long time ago," she began, seeing the vision of Ponyville before her fade into its past form and feeling her beloved farm diminish behind her, "when I was just a filly, I thought I had get away from this place. Thought this farm was just some dead end hole in the ground; didn't care none for its apples or its history. I thought I had to go out there into Equestria and find something for myself. Find myself, maybe even." She shook her head, amused and embarrassed all at once, in the same way most feel when scrutinizing their old decisions.

"So... I left Sweet Apple Acres here behind and headed for the big city. Manehatten. Can't tell you how excited I was to see it on the horizon at first. The city what never sleeps. The Grand Apple! I got extended family there you see, and I thought for sure that such an exciting place would help me find exactly what I needed." Even as she spoke of it, her eyes recalled all the sparkling enthusiasm they had once held long ago. The tall buildings, the wondrous spires, the streets clustered with bustling ponies; her emerald gems were a window to them all. But slowly there was a shift; a fading of glory. "I was kind of right, in a way," she admitted dimly but not unhappily, "cause I did find what I needed."

A true sadness wormed its way into her and, with unrestrained and sincere empathy, it all came pouring out firmly, "Let me tell you, Beanstalk... after I was there for a time... never in my whole life, before or since, have I EVER felt so out of place and homesick. I realized there just how much home truly meant to me. I realized what a terrible mistake I had made. I realized who I was supposed to be. And I raced right back home, where I belonged."

She let her tale sit for a time, taking it in again for herself and feeling refreshed and strengthened by it. Just by reminding herself of it she had placed herself somewhere that she could feel more closely connected to James and his plight. She hoped that he saw it the same way.

But she knew that it was worse for him. For her, the option had been there to retreat home; to undo it all. So much of his troubles were compounded by not having that choice... and by not even having had made the decision to leave his home for himself, too.

Rubbing his face clean another time, and with a few lesser tears still, the man finally snorted with a small, pensive, and unexpected laugh, "Long time ago, huh?"

Applejack chuckled, throwing out her hoof in playful understanding of his intentionally wrong takeaway, and she said, "Yeah, well... long enough for me. I'm not going to date myself for ya."

She took a second to enjoy the brief respite, happy to see him at least somewhat stabilized. But once the moment had passed she reverted into caring seriousness again and added, "What I was trying to say with all that was... maybe I can't see what exactly you're seeing, but I'm not blind to it. And honestly it's been kind of insultin' that you act like I am."

James brought his arms back around his knees again but didn't bury his face in them this time. Tired and still wounded, he offered earnestly, "I'm sorry..."

"Nah, no worries about it, you understand?" she assuaged him, her personality buoyed with a soothing solace. "What matters now is what we're gonna do about it."

With an almost begging desperation he asked, "What do I do?"

"I don't rightly know, Beanstalk," replied Applejack with an uncomfortable grimace. "I don't think anypony can give you a straight answer on that one."

The man pushed out some spit with an exasperated breath. Dark, bitter, and with injured sarcasm he complained through his throaty sniffs, "Oh of course not. Magic spells, and controlling the weather, and cities that float in the skies, and Princesses that raise and set THE SUN... but a magical cure for sadness? Oh no, don't be stupid. That's a bridge too far!" He coughed and choked a little as he fought to keep his emotions from running amok again.

"Hey, come on now," the farm tried to balance him out, "it's the honest truth. And really, as much as you might not want to hear it right now, that's the way it ought to be. Your feelings are so much more important than some silly old magic. They're not going to mean much if you could just turn'em on and off like a light, yeah?"

She was at least right in that he didn't want to hear it. One of his snorts came out angry. Of course these ponies would make him try to confront this and then offer him no immediate solutions. Somewhere inside he understood he was being unreasonable and harsh about it all, but it still burned. He gripped his own folded arms as one of his small shivers erupted into a furious quake. For a fiery moment he was angry, but not completely at her. At just about everything else in this world.

The farm pony attempted to helpfully add, "You got to stop sitting around, take what strength you got, get up, and find a way to go forward."

The man slowly settled down, pulling his legs in slightly and tightening up a bit. His voice came up again, weak and fearful, "Everything I knew disappeared all at once... everything except me..." A great, final gong of despair rung from some bell deep within him. "... I should be dead..."

It brought a sliver of Applejack's righteous fury back and she contended, "Woah now, don't go saying things like that!"

"... But there's nothing...," he still droned on. A record who couldn't get over his own breaking.

"You're just making yourself believe senseless things again!" the orange pony insisted with small sparks of fire. "It's just NOT TRUE, Beanstalk! There are already things for ya here. Now sure, that's not what you feel you want I bet; you want those old things back! So, cold comfort, I know! But it'd still be wrong to ignore'em. Haven't you already seen'em yet? I know I have! Heck, I could probably rattle off a dozen examples in the blink of an eye!"

He squeezed himself up even more tightly, wound with impossible tension, but he at least held his mouth back this time. With his whimpers contained, he listened.

Seeing this, Applejack rolled her eyes up at the sky and set about listing whatever came to her head: "Twilight just finds you to be one of the most fascinating ponies to talk to; I seen the way she just gets sucked into it. Fluttershy's really got a soft spot for ya; there's some side'a you that she's really in touch with. Probably in no small part due to that little squirrelly friend of hers what was really touched by how ya cared for him. And now after making all that fuss even Rainbow's really starting to warm up; I recognized the way she's been acting lately; reminds me of how me and her get along."

And it was true. One by one her friends had been discovering something pony-like in him. Something within him that could connect them despite any other conflicts they might have had with him. There was a mildly selfish part of Applejack that wanted that for herself too. She had SEEN things in him that could lead there but she had never felt connected to him. Or at least, not yet...

"Here's the one that really sticks out in my mind," she continued, slowing down. She leaned towards him closely enough that she didn't have to put any strength into her voice to emphatically relate, "That little Drypony filly. Don't think I didn't see how you lit up when she was around. That was some real tender love and care for a real sweetheart who I think made quite an impression on you. And that's not 'nothing.' Nopony who can feel something like that has 'nothing.'"

James had maintained his quiet and broken demeanor through the mentions of the others; his pitiful and selfish side had wished to ignore the reality of anything meaningful that had been built up with them. Rational or not, he feared the risk inherent in learning to care about some things in Equestria... he feared that maybe he would forget how to care about some things from the past. But one particular recent experience had risen above everything else; had gone beyond his ability to fully deny. At the farm pony's very first hints of Poppy, the tiniest, yet still sad, smile managed to slip into his expression. For a brief moment he brought his finger behind his head and tickled the tail of his hair, now bound up again with only a simple rubber rand.

The happiness faded fast though, suppressed under a terrorizing doubt and a staggeringly stubborn lonesomeness. "She's just- she's just a young, silly-" he tried to rationalize away.

"Don't go making excuses, Beanstalk!" In her frustrated anger she had to stand up again. She turned and knocked on his side lightly but sternly with the back of her hoof. "How much would it hurt her if that little one heard that? That all she worth to you? Ya minimize her feelings like that? You gonna minimize my friends' feelings too?" She staggered for a moment before she deliberately corrected, "OUR friends? My feelings? All of us... they're real feelings, you know."

Applejack turned a hoof in and pointed it straight at her heart. "I really do feel for ya," she said deeply. "Sympathy for your troubles, and friendship cause I guess I've seen enough that despite everything you're still a stand-up guy." Then, with a trusting tone and with open solidarity, "But I want to feel that friendship coming back at me. And that little filly proved it was there. No matter what you're feeling that's making you so lost and scared... all the good things are still there inside you. You're just having a hard time letting'em out on your own right now. Don't go running away from it any more."

Silence gripped the scene again as the farm pony waited for a response and James held himself still except for the occasional jitter, spasm, or low gasp. For a brief time things seemed to settle, but then they delicately, delicately started to slip. The small convulsions in him grew worse again, he heaved and spattered his breaths, and his head dipped lower to hide the fresh flow of tears.

"Everything that- everything that I've cared about, that... that meant anything... that held- held me up and supported me... it's all gone," he wheezed. "I don't- I don't know... how to deal with it... How can I... how..."

"Like I said, nopony has the answer. But we're all here to do whatever we can," Applejack reemphasized. She took a few steps forwards, away from him, and sweep her hoof across the open view of Ponyville as she said, "Everything I recommended to ya earlier I still hold to: get out some, take a look about town, get involved in things. Do something to keep living!" She returned to his side and sat down once more, this time so close that she rubbed up against him. "You keep up with the hiding and running away instead and then it's... it's no different from them Dryponies in the forest just waiting forever for the end to come."

But he bitterly scoffed at her advice, unable to see how it was a way forward. It wasn't an illuminated path into a safe future. It didn't touch all the pain that was running through his blood like a poison. "Keep living... keep... like... nothing ever happened?" He coughed with dead sarcasm, "So, just keep ignoring everything I feel?"

"No, no, no, Beanstalk. Come on," the pony pleasantly pleaded. She brought one of her legs around his shoulder with a soft, protective love. "That's not what it is. Understand that... bouncing back from something so... so... crippling isn't a sudden thing. It's not... facing down some big dragon and coming out top at the end of the day, no. But it's also not sitting about doing absolutely nothing cause then you're just gonna waste away. Then you're never gonna move on."

She rubbed him gently as her eyes dropped to the road and darted back and forth in a search of how to continue. The compacted dust wasn't the most inspirational sight. But the cool air of the afternoon carried the sweet smell of apples down from the orchard behind them and suddenly she picked up, "It's like... it's like if... you're out in the orchards bucking apples and... ya pull a muscle or you hurt your leg somehow. Sure, you're gonna be off it for a few days. And you'll only hurt it more if you go out there right away and try to buck with full force again. But it doesn't just heal back to full strength from sitting on it neither." She adjusted the leg she had around him, snuggly securing her grip, and then she leaned into him a little. Tenderly, she whispered, "There comes a time when you've got to start slowly working it like normal, but more bit by bit, step and step, working your way back up. You know, to warm the strength back up. You ease into it, start putting in more and more, and soon it's stronger than before! Same thing with living, Beanstalk. If you don't exercise it back into shape then it's never gonna get there.

"Now, I know you don't got the old things in your life anymore," she wistfully related with homegrown wisdom, "so you'll HAVE to put some new things in as part of healing; as part of carrying on."

James listened to her tale intently, his unmoved eyes locked on the foreign village in front of him. There was a deep wish inside him that it would be just as easy as she had made it sound. He tried to picture it. He tried so hard to picture moving on. But all his conceptions of life and home; of what it meant to live... they were bound up in only the familiar things that he knew. The cherry red home on a rolling hill with a creaky deck, delightful to sit on in the hot summer days; the busy crowds of people who were active and familiar and most importantly similar, who didn't see him as an ogre or escaped zoo animal; the water park that created its own real magic through the power of fond memories, and glorious laughter, and shared experiences with those that he loved, not some ridiculous and supernatural spells from unicorn horns.

But every time he tried to picture these beautiful old things, every time he tried to imagine recreating what was so critical and immortal about them, every time he tried to extract what he needed for meaningful life again from them, his twisted dreams of late came surging back. The old things that were so perfect, that he wished so badly for... they just weren't the same anymore, even in his mind. All the beautiful elements of his remembered life were always being corrupted by this unreal newness. Ponies came charging in through every crack in his mind, breaking past the guarded thresholds, invading the preserved and placid centers of calm that he dearly held on to. And as they swarmed about, their hooves stomped over the last vestiges of pure home; their galloping around thrashed the last untarnished memories of all that was important; that was essential; that was HOME to him before. The foundations of his heart crumbled. No road ahead appeared; only an unknown dark.

"... I... I... I can't..." He started to sob again.

"Course you can!" Applejack rebuffed him, but then she immediately switched to a calmer, more compassionate voice and repeated, "Course you can. I really mean it. It's the same thing as with that little Drypony filly again; the way you acted with her was true. That was YOU." With one hoof still embracing him, she took her other and pressed it into him. "That's really in there. We'll work with ya and hopefully you can start to bring that out on your own; get it back under your control. You'll get better."

But his dreams haunted him. Their implied threat hovered over him dangerously; that he'll never again have a mother, or a sister, or a friend who would come out of the house to join him on the deck for a quiet spell; he'll only have some random pony. He'll never again be on a date in the middle of the busy and familiar crowds of downtown, sharing an ice cream and a laugh within the sweltering heat of summer; he'll only have cones offered by ponies at the ice cream shop that was settled in the middle of their sometimes bizarre houses. He felt taunted. One by one the memories of joyful experiences that were the bedrock of who he was would be shunted out to make way for new, inferior, replacement experiences that were flooded with ponies. Until eventually one day he would be completely alone and naked in the dark, and the only thing he would be able to say to comfort himself would be, "Well... at least I have PONIES."

Or maybe... maybe more horrifyingly... one day he would care about ponies... because he wouldn't care about people anymore...

He fearfully expressed, "I don't want- I don't want to replace what I had... I don't want to forget it all..."

"Nopony said you had to forget nothing," she encouraged him. "You can hold on to whatever you want to! Remember whatever you want to! And... and... and you should! That's part of who you are!" she adamantly declared. However, she released a sorrowful truth afterwards, saying, "But you also got to recognize reality... most of that stuff isn't coming back... I'm sorry..."

She held him still as he shivered, her hug strong and secure. She placidly uttered, "We'll help you figure out how to hold on to all the wonderful things you want to keep. Promise."

In the ears of his mind James heard the echoes of Princess Celestia's wisdom. She had talked about all this; about surviving through infinite losses and continuing ever apace into the future. But... but... she had it down to a science somehow! Centuries of practice! Nowhere, in any blank corner of his imagination, in any lost part of his heart, could he see how such a thing was possible. From nowhere could he understand how being able to so simply move pass the loss didn't represent a destruction of that long-crafted love that was attached to all those that he cared about. Love not so limited a resource? He couldn't perceive it. He couldn't! Not even the superior light of the Princess could reveal to him the way forward.

He rasped, "I don't know how..."

"You can keep asking but, like I been saying, there ain't a true answer," the farm pony reminded him readily. Then she boldly reassured him, "You're just going to have to go forward without knowing how it'll turn out. Just got to try for it. And even though NONE of us know for sure how it'll go or what exactly we should do, we'll help you along in every way we can."

With one last refreshing squeeze, she finally let him go. But she tacked onto her words with a confused change of tone, "Honestly though... I just don't really get how getting started on that is the hardest part FOR YOU."

Surprised by the curiosity in her voice and wondering about the truth of her meaning, he dried his eyes a little and looked at her.

A deep impression emerged out of Applejack; something inspiring, admirable, and memorable that she had witnessed. She told him very respectfully, "You stood before the biggest, meanest, nastiest Drypony that they had, even when he was backed by his crowd, and you really told'em, Beanstalk! You told'em the hard truth straight on about how they had to face something they didn't know. 'Bout how they had to stop ignoring the truth. 'Bout how they had to walk a path they couldn't see." Her head rolled back and forth in honest bewilderment and she said, "I don't get why it's so much harder for you to look at yourself in the mirror and do the same thing."

For once, James finally didn't object or seek to make an excuse. He turned back to himself and looked inwards silently.

They sat together as the minutes slid by. The farm pony waited patiently as the final twinges and gasps of his active sorrow squirmed away, sealed inside him safely once more. He became calm and collected again though his eyes were still red, if dry. His profound sadness still radiated into the air but there was at last some feeling of control.

When it had all settled, Applejack plainly suggested, "You know the pony you should really be enlisting?"

Not completely empty of humor, he responded, "Oh no, don't say it..."

"Twilight." She nodded with a smirk and a shrug.

James sighed, both upset and mildly hostile, and he asked grimly, "Why does she always have the answers?"

Standing back up, the farm pony went and retrieved her hat, smacking it against her legs to throw off the dust. "First off: she doesn't," the blunt mare said with certainty. Flipping her hat back onto her head, she approached the man from the front this time and told him directly, "But she is smart. And good at learnin' and understandin'. She'll need your help to do it, but if you give her the honest chance then I'm positive she can really help you figure things out."

She leaned in, placing a hoof on one of his still raised knees. "Second off," she began, but she suddenly slowed down and one of her eyebrows shot straight up into her hat. "I'm not really sure what your deal with her is?" she wondered openly.

He didn't answer her, dipping his head and eyes down slightly. Applejack got the sense that perhaps he couldn't quite answer her. Maybe he didn't know himself.

"I get that it's hard enough to try and confront all this honestly even for yourself," she stated, "but you especially don't seem to want to work with her. You had enough in ya to talk to me... but not her? Don'tcha know why?"

No reply came from the man.

"Hmm," she hummed in thought. Something bright suddenly started to shine out of her eyes and she announced with a smile, "You know, come to think of it... I get that we all have our own idiosyncra-whatsits and - now you can tell me whether you think I'm on or off the mark here but - maybe you REALLY respect her a lot more than I've been imagining. And that's why? You don't want to saddle her with your baggage... or maybe be something less in her eyes?"

He didn't confirm or deny what she had hypothesized. He couldn't. A small, barely engaged shrug was all he could muster.

That was fine for Applejack; it was just an honest bit of thought that she had needed to get out. "Hey, that's a mighty fine compliment really! And I'd prefer to think of things like that than make worse guesses."

Taking her hoof off of him, she took a few steps back and let out a massive breath. "Well... I think I'm all jabbered out for the moment," she said, somewhat tired in spirit. "I don't know what more to say to ya that'd really be any different. I mean, I'll say the same things again and again if I need to, cause there's some part of you that is just plain refusin' to hear it," then in stern understanding again, "but you got to hear it, Beanstalk. You really got to."

The man was out of words too and he replied with only a weak nod.

"Alright then," Applejack started. But she had no where else to go. Genially, she generally offered, "Want anything? Apple? Apple juice? Apple fritter? You're welcome to stay as long as you like, too."

He sighed and shrugged once more.

With that, she nodded and began to leave. She walked around him and put one hoof up on the top bar of the fence, ready to pull herself over, but stopped to say back to him, "Right, well... you talk to me if you need anything. You can talk to ANY of us, understand?" She readied her other hoof on the fence but then halted again to hastily add, "Heck, start talking even if you don't think you need anything. Cause if the next time I see you the sad train hasn't left the pity station, well then I'm gonna shovel hot coals right under your hooves to get ya moving." With a final smile and laugh, she vaulted herself over the fence and trotted back through the orchard.

As the autumn-wearied apple trees passed her by, she reflected on what had transpired. Even though James was an individual that she still felt she would never completely understand, one who was capable of things that were always going to be too terrible for her to contemplate, he was at the same time full of all the softness and emotion that she and her friends could feel. Not understanding him fully was exactly why Twilight should be involved; it takes a pony with a better mind than hers to deal with this. And maybe Twilight couldn't have gotten started until somepony else had raised the bridge of honesty... but that was what friendship and teamwork was all about.

She didn't need to hope that she had done right, or had said the right things. She truthfully felt she had. And the unusual man from the far away place... well, he had shown himself honestly enough for her. That was all she required in a friend.

Reaching her still busy brother again, Applejack greeted, "Hey, Big Mac! All taken care of, I think! We can probably start figuring out what I owe ya!"

"Hmmm?" the oversized stallion groaned.

"Yeah, probably!" she confirmed. She took a single look back through the orchard, at the fence and beyond, but nobody was there.