An Apple a Day
Applejack would like to think she learned from her mistakes.
She'd like to think asking for help came naturally to her now, unlike before. She'd like to think that waking up that morning to a whole field of apple-less trees would make her smile for the first time in that whole week.
But it didn't.
Yes, it was Applebuck Season. Yes, it was the largest Applebuck season to date. Yes, Applejack had spent most of her free time tending the farm. Away from her friends. So why didn't Applejack Apple smile at the many, many apple carts, filled to the brim and scattered around the farm?
"Discord..."
Just as she knew it would, a bright flash erupted behind her. And, along with it, came a voice equally anticipated. "Oh, you noticed! And there was me thinking you forgot I existed!" Discord said.
Applejack shut her eyes firmly, biting her inner-cheek. "I thought we talked about this..." It was hard. By the very stubbornness that hardened her bones, it was hard keep an even voice. "I didn't need your help. Didn't want it neither."
Applejack's brows crunched together as a fuzzy paw draped over her back. "Applejack, I'm crushed! You think I'd flagrantly ignore your requests? Perish the thought!" Discord said. Then he grinned. "Never said I couldn't do it all for you, though!"
Applejack viciously shrugged away from her misfit compatriot and marched forward, no particular goal in mind. "Consarn it, ya little...! The Apples work for a livin', Discord! What are we supposed to do if y'all keep buttin' in what don't concern ya?!"
When Discord hovered above her, shadowing her every step, Applejack frowned harder, all but twitching at the thought of bucking him in the face.
“Well, you could always whore yourselves out in Canterlot," Discord casually suggested. "Bet that'll get the blood flowing."
Applejack gnashed her teeth. Discord grinned.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Discord said, weightlessly landing in front of the farmer. “Apple Bloom could hold the signs”
It wasn’t Discord’s jive, his casual uncaring tone, or even that he was munching on an apple he’d literally pulled off her cutie-mark, that launched a swift buck at the sprits face. The tail gently whipping her nose? That did it.
When Applejack realized she’d hit nothing but air, her fur stood on end. She whirled around and glared at a cackling Discord, spiraling in the air without a care in the world.
“Varmint! Unlawful, highfalutin son of a—
“Come now, Applejack!” Discord chimed, undeterred. “You’re friends have missed your company!” He swiftly took the shouting farmer into his grasp. “And so have I!”
Somehow, even passed her curses, her blatant strikes on Discord’s face, and how outrageous he looked in her hat, Applejack felt her cheeks burn. She demanded that he release her, and he complied. Discord smiled down at the panting Applejack; a cool smile, a fond smile.
“We’ve missed you, Applejack.”
In that moment, every ounce of aggression seeped from Applejack like water from a cracked bucket. Soon enough, she realized she was staring, and whipped her head away, if only to hide her confounded blush.
“Yeah? W-well... maybe I don’t feel like goin’ nowhere today.” It was a lie. Applejack knew that. And if memory served, Discord could always tell.
“Oh, you!” Discord said poking, sliding, and shifting around the farmer to meet her gaze every time she looked away. “All of our pony-friends are at Town’s Square right now!”
Finally, whether she realized it or not, Applejack’s frown vanished. “Wait. Everypony? Even Twilight? And Rainbow Dash?”
She finally made an effort to meet Discord’s eyes... and was instead met with a tiny draconequus poking out from inside her ear. “Yes indeedy!”
With a surprisingly girlish squeal, Applejack flicked the little menace from her ear. The moment her hooves met the ground, a strong sense of vertigo wobbled her legs. A maroon serpentine body pressed up against her chest and belly, and her hooves left the ground.
“Just think of it, dear,” Discord began, folding his arms behind his head. “Between Twilight’s royal duties, and Wonderbolt shore leave, this opportunity is a dime a dozen! You simply must come!”
Applejack lifted herself to stand on the wily draconequus, pointing an accusing hoof at him. “And where do y’all get off tellin’ me what to do?!” she demanded.
Discord sprang his belly up, and flipped Applejack onto his long grey neck, her hind legs straddling him. “Okay, first, telling you where I ‘get off’ is a detriment to my privacy. Second, think of this as a... gentle persuasion.”
His last word took a much deeper tone, a gentle, yet commanding voice rumbled his throat... and the mare straddling him. Before she could stop herself, Applejack shuddered quietly, her eyes rolling ever so slightly.
Applejack looked down at a smirking Discord, and her face went even redder. “Call it what ya want, Discord.” She grudgingly tore herself from her visitor and jumped to the ground, walking back to the farmhouse. “Now, if ya don’t mind, I got work to do.”
Yes. Showing him whose boss. That’s what it was all about. Applejack wouldn’t let some fool-headed draconequus persuade her. No chance in a frozen Hell. He could pry, poke fun, and smooth-talk until he was blue in the face. But Applejack would have none of it. Not a single kilogram of that foolishne--
“Eh. Suit yourself.”
Applejack sputtered, and stopped dead in her tracks. “Suit yourself? Suit your–?!
When Applejack whirled around to give Discord the flank-chew of the new generation, he was already strutting away.
“Oh, you’ll come around, my dearest Applejack.” As he marched, proud and confident, he looked over his shoulder. “Don’t you always?”
Applejack didn’t respond. She just stood there. Glowering. Clinching her teeth so hard, she feared they’d be worn down. Her eyes were hopelessly transfixed on Discord, his swanky steps fading into the sunrise.
It was sad—downright pathetic, really—how every time Discord left the farm, left her, her heart would always pull taut against her chest. As though trying to close the distance between them.
Applejack glared at the shadow pulling away from her. And like a filly who didn’t know any better, she pressed her hoof down upon it, somehow believing it would stop Discord.
Then she scraped back, somehow believing it would bring him closer.
“Get your ass back here…” she muttered.
To gallop forward and tackle Discord off his feet, was an urge Applejack was shamefully familiar with. As such, she knew how to resist it. By hitting things. Hard. Every time Discord left the farm, applebucking became a fundamental necessity of the universe.
More so than usual, anyway.
With a throaty ‘hmph!’ and a lifted chin, Applejack turned back toward her barn. She arrived at the doorstep, and glared at her older brother, Big Macintosh.
“The heck are y’all smilin’ about?” Applejack questioned with a squinty eye. “Were you watchin’ us?”
Big Mac smiled on. “Eeyup.”
Applejack frowned. “Well, that’s enough of that, Mister!” she admonished. “If ya can’t tell, there’s still plenty of work to do!”
Big Mac cast his stoic gaze across the fields of empty apple trees. “... Um...”
“Don’t even THINK about it, Mac!” Applejack shouted. “Just cuz we don’t have trees to buck, don’t mean you can go behind the barn with that silly doll of yours!”
Big Mac chewed the straw hanging from his lips. “Don’t see what that’s gotta do with nothin’,” he defended. “Ain’t your first time pulled away from work either... If ya catch what I’m sayin’”
By now, Applejack had turned so red, her blood pressure was duly questionable “H-how’d ya know about that?!”
“I plead the fifth...”
Applejack frowned harder. “Ya plead what now?”
“Nnope.”
It was hopeless. Always, always hopeless to get more than a few words from her older brother. Even when her dignity was at stake. Usually--as with every other pet-peeve--it was solved by hitting things. Hard.
Applejack glanced at the empty fields again, and sighed long and heavy. “I see what he’s doin’, ya know...” she muttered, ignoring the glance from her brother. “Tryin’ to kill the workload, so he can... do whatever he does--
“Like gettin’ behind your tail?”
“MAC!” Applejack shoved a hoof in her brother’s muscled side. “I’m your little sister, for Pete’s sake! Y’all should be defendin’ me!”
A quiet laughter rumbled in the large work-horse’s chest. It didn’t come out though. That would be silly. “AJ, you ain’t been the same since your two friends shipped off,” Big Mac said. “Much as I used to complain, that feller’s been the best thing that’s happened to ya since... well, since Twilight first came.”
Applejack thought--no, she was quite certain--her fellow farmer was asking for a buck in the head. She couldn’t even speak, wary of what sewage may’ve spewed.
“Who replaced all our worn tools with polished and oiled ones?” Big Mac asked.
Applejack whipped her head away. “Oh, we didn’t need any of that! We were doin’ just fine without ‘em!” she insisted.
“Who tutored Apple Bloom in her schoolin’?”
“S-so what if Bloom was fallin’ behind! We could’a found time to help!” Applejack faltered. And she knew her brother had caught it.
“Who saved Granny from that fallen tree?”
“He was… just showin’ off.”
Finally, Big Mac’s smile dropped, and he swept a foreleg across Sweet Apple Acres. “And who just cut Applebuck Season in half so y’all could see the ponies what love ya like family?”
Eye contact was now impossible. Applejack tried to look at her brother, and failed every time. “I… I”
Big Mac didn’t say another word. Yet he stared at his sister, patiently waiting for her answer. He didn’t expect Applejack to collapse on her belly with a defeated sigh.
“Why me, Mac?” Neither Applejack nor Big Mac could remember a time she sounded so weak, so vulnerable. “Me… of all ponies? He could'a picked anypony. Heck, I thought he was sweet on Fluttershy for the longest.” She lay her chin on her crossed fore hooves. “Why me?”
There was silence, a numbing silence. As Applejack sighed again, a large red hoof fell on her back. “Why don’t ya ask him?” Mac suggested.
Right there, every weak bone in her body—the bones that ponies were forbidden to know about—cried out, pleading for help, begging to know the right words when she did ask Discord.
In a crushing moment of weakness, Applejack almost gave in and asked her brother how she could truly face what had happened between her and the ancient spirit.
Almost.
“Hm?” Big Mac chewed on his straw again, watching Applejack rise and saunter away. “And just where are you wonderin’ off to,” he asked.
Applejack stopped, unsure whether or not to show Big Mac her frown. He already knew where she was going. And why.
“To get my hat back,” Applejack lied in voice all too low. Understandable though; it was a subtle way to hide the smile from her voice. “I’ll… be back in an hour.”
“Or six?”
The façade was crushed, and Applejack whipped her frowning blush to a grinning Big Mac. But like a clump of ash, her frown crumbled, and with that, came a smile. Finally. After seven days of knitted brows, pursed lips, and inaudible grunts, Applejack smiled.
“Twelve…” Applejack’s smile grew. “Make it twelve.”
Applejack turned back and marched with a spring in her step. A spring that she was certain, until that very moment, she’d never have again.