Act I, Scene 4: Staying Gold
“Come on, Applejack!” Scootaloo complained. “It’s already been a half-hour, and you still haven’t told us anything! If you think you can just try to take our minds off of the problem, it’s not going to work!”
The truth was that the Apple family matriarch was still struggling for words and, if she didn’t speak up soon, she knew that she would never be able to find them. She began to feel tinges of annoyance towards the young fillies who could not yet understand how difficult it was for her to summon the sort of sincerity needed for these issues. If she wasn’t careful, tragedy could strike again. She could offend the ponies she was just now starting to call family if even a single utterance was wrong. There was more riding on this explanation than they would ever know.
Finally gaining her courage, Applejack brought everypony out to the family living room and made sure that all of them were comfortably seated, as per common precaution for facing this sort of shattering news. She breathed in deeply in an attempt to calm herself down one last time before she finally began the talk.
“This may not be an easy conversation for any of us to have, and I know it certainly ain't somethin' Babs would necessarily want to be reminded of,” she started, “but Coco and I sent letters back and forth before this visit, and she feels that it’s important for all of us to know what the two of them have been through. It’s somethin' that both of them have had to hide for a long time, and it’s already taken a toll on them. But we’ve agreed that she needs the support of her family and friends to put all that beside her, so we can’t avoid this topic any longer.
“Back when she first came to visit, we didn’t know very much about her. We’d all assumed that she had some sort of family in Manehattan, even though nopony ever mentioned them. Sometimes, we can take for granted that a foal has loving parents and a home to call their own. But when Coco first found Babs, she didn’t have any of that. She, and a lot of the others that would end up going to school with her, found her on the streets.”
“Why wouldn’t she be on the streets?” Sweetie Belle questioned. “She has to get to the other side of the road somehow, and she isn’t a pegasus. I thought everypony in Manehattan used streets.”
“Not usin' a street, Sweetie Belle,” Applejack corrected. “’On the streets’ means that’s where they live. In cities like Manehattan, it’s a tad bit more obvious, but sometimes, ponies don’t have a house to live in.”
“Why not?” Scootaloo asked. “Manehattan is really big, so wouldn’t they have room to give everypony a house?”
“They have room, but ya can’t just give ponies houses. You've gotta charge them lots of bits, and that’s not somethin' that everypony has. It costs more to live in a city, too.”
“Well, that’s not very nice,” Apple Bloom complained. “They should just give them the house anyway. If they need it, they need it.”
“I’m sorry, but that ain't how the world works. Lots of ponies wish it was that way, but if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
“Then does that make us all beggars, considering we’re already horses in the first place?” Sweetie Belle questioned.
“It’s an expression, Sweetie Belle. Now, can I please continue my story without anypony else interrupting?”
All three fillies nodded their heads, being careful not to do anything else to annoy an already very stern-looking Applejack.
“Anyway, it turns out that Babs did have a place to live inside a factory,” she continued. “But she could only live there because a group of nasty criminals fillynapped her and forced her to stay there. She couldn’t go outside that building to play or go to school or anythin'. All they would let her do is work.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound quite so bad,” Apple Bloom commented. “I have to work where I live, too. If I don’t do my farm duties, Applejack and Big Mac would get mad at me.”
“It wasn’t quite like that,” Babs answered. “It was a lot worse, for one thing.”
“But I don’t get why it would’ve been—“
“Apple Bloom, every foal has to do chores every once in a while. There’s a big difference between that and what they made Babs do, though. For one thing, chores don’t tend to take long. Parents know there’s more to life than doin' them and want their children to enjoy their lives. On the other hoof, ponies like these criminals make foals like Babs take jobs so that they won’t have to pay 'em as much as a grown pony. They don’t cut down the hours for them, though, as Babs basically had to work the same amount of hours as an adult would’ve had to. They wouldn’t let her take the day off when she felt sick or wanted to go out, either, and placed her in a dangerous environment. Then they would sell the fabric she made and—“
“They had her make fabric?!” Sweetie Belle interrupted. “I’m sorry to get in the way of your story again, but does that mean that when I go with Rarity to get fabric from the store, then I’m helping the ponies who hurt Babs? I’m giving them money so they could keep doing it to her?”
“Don’t worry,” Rarity responded, “operations like this are pretty well-known in the fashion world, so I’ve always been careful to stay away from these sorts of shady things. Most of the time, they do it to cut costs, so most of the things they make tend to run cheap. I try to spend a few more bits to get materials to make sure stuff like this isn’t associated with my products. Besides, most of what she had to make was meant to look like items that you could already buy, but cost too much for some ponies.”
“But isn’t doing that just copying from somepony else?”
“It is, but unfortunately, in larger cities, unless you get clothes from a fancy store, it can be hard to tell if it’s the real thing or if it’s just a fake made by the same sorts of ruffians that took Babs away.”
“Coco’s boss used to be one of those merchants who'd sell the fakes,” explained Applejack, “and that’s how she ended up findin' out about it. As soon as she saw what was goin' on, she pulled her straight outta there and made sure she was put somewhere she’d actually be taken care of, where they’d let her go to school and have friends like the rest of y'all. Once Coco decided to leave her job with the seller, she ended up adopting Babs. And that’s basically the entire story.”
“Did the seller ever find out about what happened?” Apple Bloom questioned.
“Suri never found out,” Coco answered, shaking her head. “But my boss, the director who works with me on Bridleway, has wanted to speak with her about it. He’s pretty outraged about the whole matter.”
“Well, who wouldn’t be?” Sweetie Belle asked. “I mean, all this does is give real designers like Rarity a bad name.”
“And keep fillies like us from developing their talents!” Scootaloo added.
“But if none of this is her fault, then why were ponies bullying her at school about it?” Apple Bloom asked.
Babs merely shrugged in reply to the previously asked question.
“Ponies will find anythin' to tease somepony else about, I guess,” she admitted. “At least, that’s what it seemed like. I’ll admit that it didn’t really bother me at first, as I was used to worse, but somehow, I just snapped somewhere along the way. Honestly, I was hoping that none of you would ever have to find out about this.”
“Why would you think something like that, dear?” Rarity questioned. “I’m sure the others would’ve understood if you had just told them what had happened to you back when you first visited Ponyville. That is what friends are for, after all.”
“I know now that it would’ve been better, but…”
No matter how hard she tried, the little brown earth pony just couldn’t find the words to explain why she had so callously pushed such a loving community away from her at first. Her ears and tail began to droop in shame as she remembered the sort of betrayal that she had inflicted upon ponies who never would’ve hurt her in the first place. Sure, it’d been a while ago, but it still plagued her. To think that she almost hadn’t gotten this chance…
“It’s okay,” Apple Bloom comforted, placing a hoof under her cousin’s chin. “We all kept secrets back then. But now that we were able to hear all this about you, we don’t have to do any of that anymore. We can just forget about the rougher times and—“
“You know, one of the few things I really remember well before my parents died was the letters we would get from Ponyville,” Babs admitted. “Back then, all I really wanted to do was meet you, to see the cousin who was so close to me, in age and in destiny. But as I grew, I realized that I never truly wanted you to understand my problems. It wasn’t that you couldn’t—even though we live in different places, there are ponies who take advantage of others in every city. But…I didn’t want you to end up like me. I’ve had to realize so many things that others my age were unaware of. And…I didn’t want you to end up the same way.”
Looking out a nearby window, Babs observed, “You know, in school lately, we’ve been beginning to look at poetry, and I know you may not think this has much to do with what I was saying before, but I remember one line that really made me think about the way I felt all that time.”
She gave a quick, thoughtful sigh and spoke:
“’Nothing gold can stay.’ They say that, when the poet wrote that line, he was referring to how, when you go through life, a pony’s innocence, the ‘gold’ within themselves, will always flake off. However, even then, there are those who still maintain that same amount of gold and happily continue with life. Looking back, I think those were always the sort I envied, as I couldn’t remember the last time I felt like that. Ever since I met you, I’ve always thought of you as that type, Apple Bloom. You didn’t have to go what I went through and have nothing but joy in your life. Finally, I realized that was why I made that stupid, impulsive decision to join Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon in treating you that way. Because…if I made you hate me, if I made it so that you would never care about what happened to me, even to the point where you wished I would’ve stayed in that situation…then the news never would’ve tainted you. I never would’ve tainted you. You would’ve kept your innocence.”
“That wouldn’t have worked, you know,” Apple Bloom answered. “Even if I would’ve hated you, I would still have cared if something happened to you. Maybe it’s because you haven’t had a real family up until now, but you have to know that, even if my heart would’ve wanted to hate you, I would still have loved you. That’s how family works.”
Babs looked to everypony in the room, having finally learned that all of them were willing to accept her, to not only forget her wrongdoing, but to use that past mistake to strengthen their relationship with her. Rarity was even willing to come to Manehattan to talk to Suri, as she had told her herself. For once, she was in a situation where all those around her were willing to defend her with all she had.
“Then I’m glad I finally found all of you.”
****
The rest of the trip quickly came and went and while Babs still had not earned her cutie mark despite the crusading she’d done with her friends, none of that mattered. For her and her mother, everything seemed to be absolutely perfect. For once, life was finally going their way.
Of course, the letter that had been lying on Coco’s desk for a week would soon change all of that.
“Hang on, Rarity,” Coco spoke when she first found it. “I’d love to show you around the theatre, but first I need to read this letter from my director. It looks rather important, if you ask me.
“But on another note, Babs, I hope you’ve learned your lesson from all of this. Sometimes, it can be nice to pretend a problem doesn’t exist and to live in ignorance of it, but there’s nothing negative to come out of learning bad news. It’s a part of life, in fact. Therefore, nopony should be kept in the dark of issues that they really ought to kn—“
Coco took one last look at the letter and quickly cut off the statement that she was about to make.
“What’s wrong?” Babs questioned.
“Oh, no, no, no, this can’t be right,” Coco muttered with a nervous chuckle. “I can just pretend I never saw that.”
“What was in the letter?” Rarity asked.
“Nothing of importance. My director’s such a jokester. There’s absolutely no way my job could be in danger after less than two months working here. Nopony could be that cruel of a boss, right?”
Her two companions were about to drop the subject when they noticed a familiar mare coming through the office door, which had been left open for some odd reason.
“You know, there’s something else you should seriously learn,” she answered mockingly. “If you’re going to start giving out morals and all that nonsense, you really ought to keep to them, okay?”
“Suri!” Coco yelled, recognizing her former boss’s voice in an instant. “What in Equestria’s name are you doing here?”
“Why shouldn’t I be here?” Suri countered. “This is my office, after all, okay? You know, I’ll never know why that director of yours let you skip work for a week. You really will miss out on a lot. Luckily, you have me to fill you in.”
“So you’re my replacement?” Coco asked in concern.
“Don’t jump to conclusions so quickly, as that really is a terrible fault to have. The producer just thought this show needed an assistant designer in case this sort of thing happens again. Or, for that matter, in case you just decide working on your own is really just too hard. See, that’s what happens to quitters like you. But, to answer your question, I’m not going to replace you, or at least—“
Suri gave a sudden pause, truly savoring the situation she was now in.
“—not yet.”
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I think somebody deleted a lot of your story... was your account hacked?
7329627
Nope, it was planned. This is the 2.0 version with shorter parts. (My blog says a lot more about it.)
huh...somehow I got the feeling I had read it already,...did I unmarked it?
Huh, I've never heard that one before. That's a good saying.
I had a hard time buying the foal's naivety of the situation, but Babs' poetry quote and speech almost justifies it. I get what you were going for at least.
And, oh God, Suri's back already! I thought we'd at least get through chapter ten or so before she came back.
8237137
No, silly. Suri's coltfriend comes in Chapter Ten!
You can decide for yourself if I'm being serious here.
Of course not Sweetie Belle, your too sweet and innocent for that~
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Oh, Babs...
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Hmmm...that would really explain why Babs bullied the CMC for reasons besides being afraid of being bullied herself
! Very good description pixel
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Couldn't have said it better myself Apple Bloom
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Oh boy...
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This is freaking awesome