For Want of a Horseshoe Nail

by Sixes_And_Sevens

Confession

Bloom was, in fact, in the library. This was not out of any desire for knowledge, but simply because it was ultimately where her wandering hooves had taken her. She suspected that the TARDIS had heard her tell the rest of the party that she intended to go there, and the labyrinth of corridors had arranged to lead her there. Who was she to argue with a transdimensional spaceship? She was, therefore, floating on her back in the swimming pool, staring at the library ceiling, feeling very small.

She vaguely wished that she had told the truth. Maud knew that she hadn’t, she was certain of it. That look on her face had spoken volumes, at least to somepony who had learned how to read it.

And yet, how could she? She knew that the world ran on coincidences, Celestia knew she’d seen too much evidence to argue against that. The fact that Dash’s folks had died in a train wreck and the fact that her own parents were alive and well rather than dead in a train wreck spoke volumes. The timeline fit like a sock. She had only just gotten her parents back, something she’d dreamed of ever since she could remember. She had only gotten to spend a few minutes with them, and most of that had been her mother’s abrasive hair styling. Was it so wrong not to want to let that go? Was it so wrong to want to hold these few precious moments tight? Was it so wrong to desire to spend some time with the parents that she had never known?

She took in a deep breath and submerged, closing her eyes and holding a hoof to her nose. Once she was completely submerged, she opened up her eyes to stare at the light glinting off the water’s surface. Her eyes stung and burned with the chlorine, like an unpleasant, unscratchable itch. The beauty was breathtaking— fortunately not literally. She could hold her breath for longer than any of her friends, unless Dinky cheated and used an air bubble spell, a fact that Applejack had always attributed to her good farmpony stock. She watched the light dance on the water for a few moments more, then resurfaced, rubbing fiercely at her eyes.

It was wrong, she knew. At fundament, she could recognize objectively that her parents had already passed away. They had been gone for all her life. In her more sentimental moments, Granny would often state that they had gone on to Greener Pastures, though Bloom wasn’t certain if that was a metaphor or some idealized afterworld. It was hard, looking at their headstones, to believe that they had gone anywhere at all. Looking at pictures, hearing stories, it was hard to believe that they had ever really existed in any meaningful sense. Yeah, she’d heard all the stories; Mama teaching Big Macintosh how to make the most perfect apple pancakes you ever did taste, Applejack winning her first blue ribbon after months of training with Papa, even Granny Smith’s tales of her parents’ courtship (and more frequently, stories of Papa’s misspent youth).

But those stories and pictures could only go so far. Fictional characters had stories and pictures, and thus her parents shared mental shelving space with Babe Blue, minotaur lumberjack, or the Power Ponies, or How-Now Brown, the unassuming bull detective. To some extent, they had never really existed for her. Now, though… she had met them. They existed. They were real. So, while she knew intellectually that the only thing that she could do was to let them die, emotion had hijacked intellect several miles back and was even now caroming around the inside of her skull. She didn’t want to let them go, not now that she had only just gotten to meet them. Yet, the longer she stayed in this strange, different world, the harder it would be for her when she had to leave. It was a puzzle. After a discontented sigh, Apple Bloom took another deep breath and slipped beneath the water’s surface once more.

***

The Doctor’s face had turned grave. “You don’t think she was telling the truth?”

Maple snorted. “Not a chance. She had guilt written all over her face.”

“But for what reason did she evade? From her expression, I thought she looked—” Zecora halted momentarily. “Afraid,” she concluded, eyes darting from face to face.

That brought the cream pegasus up short. “Y’know, I think you’re right,” she agreed, nodding meditatively.

“Afraid of what, though?” Spike asked, raising an eyebrow. “Trains?”

Thunderlane’s forehead wrinkled. “Why do you say ‘trains’ specifically?” he asked, turning to face the dragon.

Spike blinked. “Uh, I dunno. She asked us how Dash’s parents died, I said ‘train wreck,’ and then she really started acting weird.”

Gears started to turn over in Thunderlane’s mind. “Parents…” he murmured. “She said something about her parents… but then she stopped…” he stared into space. “You don’t suppose…”

Maple’s eyebrows shot into the air. “Impossible. She’s too young, and we’re too far back.”

“No, no, she’s seventeen. She’d have been very young, but it is possible,” Thunderlane said, eyes growing wide.

Maud glanced up from the spot on the wall that she had been sullenly staring at for the last five minutes, eyebrow raised.

Lyra just glanced around. “Okay, somepony want to explain this to me?” she asked.

Maple was trotting quickly through the door that Thunderlane had already burst through. Lyra rolled her eyes. “Come on then. Geronimo!”

“Hey,” the Doctor protested. “That’s my line!”

***

“Apple Bloom!” Thunderlane shouted as he burst into the library. “Where are—” He cut off abruptly as he saw the yellow form at the bottom of the swimming pool. He gasped, briefly too shocked to do anything, but then plunged into the water, swimming down with all the power he could muster. He grabbed Bloom around the barrel and— was met with a hoof to the face. Intense orange eyes glared at him reproachfully. Oh. Oops.

Gasping and hacking, Thunderlane dragged himself out of the water, Apple Bloom stepping out just behind him, hardly the worse for wear. She sighed and patted the older pony between the wingblades. “S’awright,” she said consolingly. “Ya thought Ah was drownin’, Ah get it. But… d’ya’ll even know how to swim?”

“I… yes,” Thunderlane sputtered. “It’s just harder to do with wings.” He glanced back. “Aw, Tartarus, these are gonna take forever to preen…”

“Well, Ah don’ reckon y’all jes’ came in here ta work on yer back crawl. What’s th’ matter?”

“Why don’t you tell us that?” a different voice said from the doorway.

The yellow mare froze for a second, and then slumped. She turned to see the rest of the Elements watching her closely. “Oh. Howdy.” She coughed nervously. “Uh, Ah reckon y’all wanna talk ta me ‘bout summat.”

The Doctor stepped forward. “Apple Bloom,” he said quietly. “What happened to your parents?”

The young mare breathed out slowly. She looked down at the ground, biting her lower lip. “They… died,” she said slowly. “Long time ago, when Ah was jes’ two or three.”

Thunderlane’s face fell slightly, as though he had just missed a step in the darkness. Maple nodded sadly and Maud’s eyebrows cinched slightly. Lyra’s eyes went wide. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!” she gasped. “How? If that’s… not too personal…”

Bloom stared. “Uh… hasn’t she worked it out?”

Maple shrugged. “That’s Lyra for you. Brilliant engineer, but sometimes just a little slow about things that aren’t mechanical.”

“Hey!” Lyra protested. “That’s… okay, that’s more or less true, but still. Rude.”

“Lyra,” Bloom said kindly.

“Present, Miss!” the unicorn said, her head snapping forward.

“They died in a train crash.”

Lyra’s eyebrows rose. “Wow.. First Dash’s parents, then yours. What a way to run a railroad.”

Bloom glanced at Zecora, but the zebra just shrugged. “You’ve helped her begin it. Just give her a minute.”

Lyra’s jaw dropped. “Oh. Oooh. Right. Your parents aren’t dead, so they weren’t on the train, so somepony made sure that your parents and Rainbow’s parents were switched. So… somepony’s been deliberately interfering with history!”

“Question is,” the Doctor said, frowning slightly, “who?”

“Can’t we jes’ go back an’ find out fer ourselves? Watch how things pan out, then go back an’ stop ‘em?”

The Doctor shook his head. “No, no. Definitely not. We’ve only got one shot at this. Once we’ve seen events unfold, that’s it, kaput, stuck. We’ve only got as much wiggle room as we have because you can remember the way the universe is supposed to be. If you see the events that lead to the current universe occurring, they’ll become fixed in your personal timeline, and nothing you can do will change them. First Law of Time, don’t muck about with your own past or future.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “And you’re so good at following the Laws of Time. How many times have we met other versions of you?”

The Doctor waved a hoof. “That’s different, I was fulfilling a closed timelike curve. Anyway, I’m a professional, I know what I’m doing. Will do. Have done. Will have done. Si-would haven-did. Whatever. Point is, we need to figure out what happened from an outside force, some kind of account that doesn’t require us to have to see the events themselves unfold…” He trailed off, seeing a determined look cross Apple Bloom’s face.

“Ah know who ta talk to,” she said soberly.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

And now the worst part of the archive binge, hitting the present moment and having to wait for the next update. Still, fantastic stuff thus far. Eagerly looking forward to more... though I have to wonder why Apple Bloom is the one who remembers what once was.