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Chapter 22

“Mum?”

Rainbow Dash looked up from her desk. The huge stack of exam papers waiting to be graded sprawled over the entire right half of the table. Her little pile of completed papers, underlined and written all over in her untidy red scrawl, looked pitifully small in comparison.

Zap Apple stood in the doorway, his long orange-and-green mane falling into his eyes as always. “Can I talk to you?”

“Of course, kiddo.” Rainbow gladly let fall the paper she had been about to read. Marking all those endless essays on flight theory was definitely the very worst part of being a professor. If it were up to her, she would have assessed all her students through practical skill only, but the Dean was very firm that her class had to have at least one exam a year.

Zap Apple came into the room, and propelled himself with a flap of his wings onto the window seat. He settled himself into the cushions, and propped one hoof onto the windowsill. Rainbow expected him to tell her what was on his mind — Zaps was usually such a forthright colt — but he stayed quiet.

Rainbow Dash pushed her chair back and stood. She walked over to him, and rested a hoof on his shoulder. Even though he was sitting, she had to look up at him. It had been that way for years now, of course — but somehow, it still surprised her every time. She still thought of him as her little boy, even though he was a stallion as large as she was and nearly half as big again.

She looked up into his faraway pink eyes, an exact copy of her own, and felt her heart constrict a little. No matter how big Zap Apple got, he would always be her kid.

“What’s wrong, buddy?”

Zap Apple looked down at her at last, and let out a long and heavy breath. “I’ve been thinking.”

He fell silent again, and Rainbow Dash decided to take a stab at guessing what the issue was. “About Leaftail?” She had always known Zaps was a surprisingly quiet and sensitive soul for saying he was her and AJ’s son, but she hadn’t expected him to take each romantic rejection so hard. When the years kept slipping by and Zaps still hadn’t introduced anypony special to them, and Applejack had suggested involving Auntie Tia, Rainbow had agreed; not because she was as concerned about grandfoals as Applejack was, but because she had wanted to ease that quiet, pervasive air of loneliness that seemed to dog her son’s steps wherever he went. But it seemed that Auntie Tia’s services were having the opposite effect. After every failed match, Zap Apple seemed a little sadder, a little more withdrawn.

“No,” Zap Apple answered, surprising her.

“What then?”

“I’ve been thinking about…about Dust Devil, actually.” Zap Apple’s voice was quiet, and he was gazing out at the orchards again.

After a moment’s reflection, Rainbow Dash hopped up onto the window seat beside him. It seemed like he had a lot weighing on his mind, and she wanted to take her time and make sure she got this discussion right. She followed his eyes out over the fields. Applejack was in the southwest orchard today, getting in the last of the Red Delicious crop.

“What about Dust Devil?” She kept her voice carefully neutral. She couldn’t deny that when Zaps had first told her his date with Lightning Dust’s daughter had been a failure, her initial emotional response had been glee. But then she had watched him disconsolately wander the house for days afterwards, moping over this filly Rainbow had never even met, and her feelings had softened. Dust Devil was probably nothing like her mother. Hopefully. Surely nopony could be quite as bad as Lightning Dust. Certainly nopony that elicited such sadness in a stallion as sweet as Zap Apple — but then again, who but a monster could reject a stallion as sweet as Zap Apple? In the end, Rainbow Dash had concluded that it didn’t truly matter whether Dust Devil was like her mother or not; the date had been an utter failure and it was certain that her name would never be mentioned again.

Until now, it would seem.

Zap Apple rested his head against the window pane and let it slide down until it rested atop his hoof. “I don’t know. I’ve just been…thinking about her.”

“You really enjoyed that date with her, huh?” Rainbow rubbed his shoulder sympathetically.

He nodded. “Yeah. Until the end bit of it, I mean. Princess Celestia talked about how important it is that you go for personality and not…other stuff. And Dust Devil…I liked her the most out of any of the ponies I was matched with.”

Rainbow Dash tried not to smile. Zap Apple had only been matched with three ponies. What would he think if he could have seen a line-up of all the ponies she had dated before Applejack?

“You could always ask Auntie Tia to arrange a few more,” she suggested delicately. “Play the field a bit.”

Zap Apple sighed and shook his head. “I don’t think that feels right. I don’t want to swamp myself with options until they all become meaningless.” Seeing that Rainbow was about to object, he raised a hoof to stop her before continuing. “And it’s more than that. It’s Dust Devil in particular. I just…I had a connection with her.” He sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “Even when she rejected me, she wasn’t cruel. She was…honest. I think that’s important.”

Rainbow Dash chuckled. Applejack would be proud. “You know, you’re just like your mum sometimes, buddy.”

Zap Apple perked up a little. “Tell me about you and Mum. How did you know she was the one for you?”

Rainbow Dash let her hoof fall from Zap Apple’s shoulder as she leaned back against the glass. She chewed at her lip a little as she considered. “Well, we were friends for a long time before we were ever together. Ten years, before we even thought about it.”

“What changed?”

“It’s hard to put my hoof on it. Our bond was always a little bit different than my friendship with the rest of the girls. They support me, and I support them. We’d do anything for each other, and they’re all like my sisters.”

“And Mum?”

“Well,” Rainbow Dash smiled a little, slightly embarrassed, “I think the real difference is that I could compete with her. I could really let loose when I was with her, give it my all and know that she’d do the same.”

Zap Apple looked away from the orchards and into her eyes for the first time. He offered her a small smile, and Rainbow Dash felt her heart constrict with love in just the same way it had when he had given her the gift of his very first toothless smile.

“Yeah, that does sound like you two.”

“Some of the happiest times I ever spent were racing against AJ,” Rainbow said fondly. “And then I realised that when your mum beat me, it didn’t make me angry, or even make me want to beat her next time. I was glad she put up a fight; that she was better than me sometimes. Seeing her win was somehow even more fun than winning myself.”

An undignified snort of laughter from Zap Apple made her jump. She grinned and gave him a playful shove. “What?”

“I just can’t quite imagine you ever enjoying losing, Mum.”

Rainbow’s mouth quirked. “Yeah, it only ever happens with two ponies.”

“Mum, and…?”

“You, you big doofus.” Rainbow nudged him again, and his muzzle split in a proper smile. Rainbow internally hoof-bumped herself. Look at her, successfully cheering him up. Even after all these years, she was still fricking nailing this parenting stuff.

“Anyway,” she sighed, leaning back against the wall once more, “As the years passed, we just got closer and closer. We spent more time together, and there was one summer in particular where I realised I just couldn’t get enough of her company. I was spending whole days down here mucking out the pigs and Celestia knows what else, just so that she’d be done faster and able to come for a run with me.” She smiled at the memory. “I felt pretty guilty about it at first, actually. I thought I was choosing AJ as a best friend, and that made me feel like cow dung. I wanted to be true to all my friends, not pick one above the others.”

“And when did you realise it was…more than that?”

Rainbow’s cheeks warmed. She remembered the moment with perfect clarity. “When we did our own private running of the leaves here at Sweet Apple Acres,” she told him. “Ponyville’s running was the week before, and we’d tied for first place. So we decided to have a rematch; Applejack needed to get the leaves off the apple trees anyway.”

Zap Apple’s eyebrows climbed and he glanced out at the ocean of treetops beyond the window. “All this, just the two of you?”

Rainbow smirked. “You know it. We even sent Apple Bloom and Big Mac packing so they couldn’t help us. We wanted a totally fair match.”

“So what happened?”

“Your mum kicked my ass, is what happened. We spent hours galloping all over the orchards, trying to get all the trees, and by the end of it I was totally bushed. I think AJ was too, but we were both trying not to show it. I was just stumbling along after her by the time we got to the finish line, practically crawling. And she crossed the line, and flopped down, and then she saw me dragging myself along and came running right back to lend me a hoof. And I looked at her and I realised what all those feelings I’d been having were. And I kissed her.”

Letting out a soft whoosh of air, Zap Apple turned back to the window. “And that was it? You just knew, after that?”

Rainbow Dash lifted one side of her mouth in a wry smile and reached out to ruffle his mane. “Course not, kid. Relationships are tough. You can’t really just ‘know’ anything.We spent months figuring out what the heck we were doing and what we wanted. We spent years dating each other. Then we got married, and eventually we had you and our little family was whole. But we certainly didn’t know what we wanted straight away. Each step took a lot of thinking.”

She followed his gaze out over the trees and up to the cerulean expanse of the sky. She had given up her beloved cloud-house to live with Applejack, exactly the type of ground-bound pegasus she’d once sworn she would never become, but she’d never regretted it. Applejack was worth every second of it.

Her eyes drifted back to Zap Apple, and she thought affectionately of when he was a foal. So small, with his stubby little wings and massive eyes and gap-toothed grin. She had never thought she’d be a maternal sort of mare, but family was so hugely important to Applejack that she’d decided to give it a shot.

They had been supremely lucky they lived near a hospital with such expert fertility doctors, and even luckier that Applejack had a brother willing to donate sperm. Not many lesbian couples could say their child belonged to both of them genetically. There had been drawbacks, of course; their choice meant that Rainbow had to be the one to carry the foal, rather than Applejack, which had always been their plan. While having Applejack waiting on her hoof and mouth for eleven months had been pretty sweet, being too fat and heavy to get off the ground by the later stages had been one of the toughest experiences of her life. She couldn’t stand to be grounded.

But in the end, their awesome little dude had been worth it. With Applejack’s pluck and her love of the air, he was the perfect combination, with both of their best qualities and more besides. Teaching him to fly would always be one of Rainbow’s most treasured memories.

“Dust Devil wanted kids, right?” she asked. “Do you…think you might ever, with the right pony?”

Zap Apple frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know!” He threw his hooves up. “How is anypony meant to know when they’re ready for something like that?”

“You can’t know,” Rainbow Dash said hastily, reaching for his hoof. He let her take it, and she held him gratefully. “Like I said before. I didn’t know if I wanted foals when AJ and I started dating.”

He glanced up with renewed interest. “You didn’t?”

“Course not,” Rainbow said. She gave a sheepish grin. “I wasn’t exactly a very responsible pony when I was your age.”

“That’s exactly it,” Zap Apple answered. “I just feel like…I’ve barely started being an adult, you know? How can I tell what I want to do?”

Rainbow Dash tried to think back to what had cemented her decision. Applejack had always known she wanted foals, in some form, whether it was bio or adopted. Rainbow hadn’t been able to commit to much more than that she loved Applejack, and would try her best to be open to anything AJ wanted. And that had been good enough for Applejack for many years, until they were talking seriously about marriage. She had asked Rainbow for a firmer answer, and Rainbow had done her best to oblige. She had borrowed baby Apple Tart for the day — Sugar Belle and Big Mac had been glad of the break — and had tried to imagine he was hers.

Cleaning up vomit and changing nappies had been rough, and it had seemed like fluid was always coming out of one of Tartie’s many orifices. Rainbow had been a wreck by the end of that day, distraught both at the endless wailing, and at the prospect of having to tell Applejack she didn’t share her deepest and most treasured dream, no matter what that might mean for their relationship.

But then, finally, with half an hour left to go, Apple Tart had looked up at her and given her a little baby smile that dimpled his cheeks in the exact same way as Applejack’s, and something had shifted in Rainbow’s heart. A little baby Applejack, that would belong to her in the same way that AJ did. If it was something that was important to Applejack…well, she would do anything for her marefriend. Why not this, too?

And when Zaps had arrived, and looked up at her with her own big pink eyes, her heart had melted. While it was definitely true that she’d let Applejack take on the lion’s share of the nappies, she had grown to love her little dude more than she’d ever believed possible.

“Sometimes you can’t tell what you want until you have it,” she answered him at last. “And then you can look at it, and think: yeah, this is it.” She released his hoof and stood up. “Just ask yourself this — is she a pony that you could love?”

Zap Apple hung his head so that his hair hid his expression. “All I know is I want to see her again. I can’t stop thinking about her.”

Rainbow Dash smiled. “That sounds a lot like love to me.”

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