Applejack remembers her childhood after moving away from Sweet Apple Acres
In this story, based off the album Rooms of the House Applejack reminisces about her childhood and teenage years and the choices she made after the death of her parents.
This story is technically an AU, and will include small bits of electricity being used, ie radios, and later on televisions. Its not going to stray too terribly far away from canon i don't think.
Trigger warnings for death, alcoholism, brief sexuality, and language.
Applejack remembers the tornado as a major turning point in her childhood. Before the tornado, she had lived in a small town just south of Manehattan. Her father and mother, Bramley Apple, and Ms. Murcott Mandarin owned and ran a small grocery shop there. Their life was a simple one, Ms. Murcott Mandarin ran the shop and cared for AJ and her older brother while her father got shipments of fruits and delivered homemade jams and preserves to other ships all throughout Equestria. It was hard work, but both the Apple and Orange families had strong work ethic.
The business didn’t go well, but Applejack barely remembers this. She also barely remembers the move to Ponyville, only that they were packed up and moved to the ranch house, where Granny Smith and Grandpop Elstar ran the Apple Family Farm. Bramley and Ms. Murcott continued to make jams, selling them to make a living. The farm didn’t make enough to comfortably support both the elder apples and the addition of four extra mouths.
Applejack does, however, remember doing farm work with her mother and brother. Later on, after she had returned from her stay with the Oranges, she took over her mother’s share as well. Her mother, pregnant with her younger sister, spent most of this time sitting on the porch, watching her children work. Ms. Murcott grew quite weak during her pregnancy, Granny Smith often stayed up all night helping her daughter in law cope with the pains.
Apple Bloom was born only a week before the tornado. Bramley Apple wasn’t home when this happened. Ms. Murcott and the Apples had tried hard to get a letter to him, but the time went on by. The weather across Equestrian had been windier than usual this season. The summer heat was starting to meet the coolness of oncoming autumn. Tornado warnings, which came over an old radio Grandpop Elstar kept next to his chair, were common. Almost every evening for a week they were informed of a warning.
Applejack remembers the night of the tornado with vivid clarity. Even looking back upon it, she could hear and smell and see it, somewhere in her mind. It had been a particularly hot day when the weather turned. Big Mac was helping Grandpop Elstar with his plowing. Applejack, who had finished feeding the hogs, sat on the porch and watched. Looking back on it, AJ remembers how closely her brothers red pelt matched her grandfathers. Both of them were covered in sweat, and she remembers hearing one of them remark the breeze was nice.
Applejack had, at the time, agreed with it, it was, only shortly after that moment that she noticed how quickly the clouds were rolling in. Had they escaped the pegasi that would have normally broke them? If Applejack had paid better attention to the radio at that time in her life she would have known that the work of the weather wasn’t quite the pegasi’s fault.
Her mother is the one who calls out to them. Opening the door, “Storm’s coming!” She yelled. Applejack can remember her mother’s voice, Light and flowy with a heavy Manehattan accent. The boys headed inside. Applejack remembers how they smelled, like dirt, and sweat. The same way she did when she worked on the farm.
The family had dinner as normal that night. Murcott Mandarin wrote a letter to her husband and stored it away to mail out the next day. Apple Bloom cried all through dinner, and when her mother had tried to stand with the baby, Grandpop Elstar spoke. Applejack doesn't quite remember what he said, but it was something along the lines of “Coddling that baby ain't gonna do nothing but make her lazy”
The next thing Applejack remembers about the night was the wind. It traveled through an open window, cold and fast and loud. The bluster extinguished several candles and chilled the room. The house had grown dark, and the family sat quietly for a few moments. Frightened. Even baby Apple Bloom was quiet.
That night was the first time that AJ had heard the emergency alarm. It cut through the silence with a terrible wail. Applejack remembers her brother jumping up, she remembers the look of surprise her mother held when she realized the baby did not cry out with fright. Her grandfather was the first pony to break the quiet of that moment. “Everypony in the cellar!” He went first; Applejack remembers this being one of the last times she saw her granddad run. Grandpop Elstar would only a few years later grow terribly ill from cancer.
The red stallion, calls his grandson for help, and the two of them pried the storm doors open. Ms. Murcott swaddled the baby in a blanket and the two of them disappeared down the stairs. She remembered the wind catching her mother’s long yellow hair, blowing it back and forth. AJ helped her grandmother get candles and matches, and they were the next ones in the cool, dark cellar. When Big Mac had entered, Grandpop Elstar closed the door.
She can still hear it, how it clanged shut, muffling the wheezing cries of the wind. Applejack sat next to her older brother. No one spoke. Everything was quiet. Granny Smith lit a candle and set it on the hard dirt floor beneath them.
Applejack can remember everything. The baby was quiet, and it scared her, made everything feel eerie. When AJ had asked if her sister was okay, her mother replied quietly that the baby was asleep. There is calmness downstairs. And it felt, at the time, like a lifetime had passed.
The only noises that came from the room were from her grandfather, sitting at his workbench, carving away at something, and her mother, humming softly as if it would make her children feel calmer. Applejack had, at the time, examined the jars kept in the cellar. Most of them were different jellies and preserves, some of them made by her parents. In the corner of the cellar, on a high shelf that, at the time only Elstar could reach, were bottles of wine and whiskey. Special aged cider sat there as well.
Applejack turned her head, looking at her mother, noticing only then that her mother was crying. Ms. Murcott had been a strong, spitfire of a woman, with a plump frame, and orange fur, this was the first time she had cried in front of her children.
“You ok Ma?” Mac would ask, his tenderness had gotten him bullied in school, but AJ loved her older brother dearly. Her mother just nodded; her humming wavering only for a few moments as the women took a big breath and composed herself.
“Just frightened,” Her mother told them. There was more silence; for quite a while. Applejack now realizes that the fear her mother had was for her father. She didn’t know it at the time, but he would have been traveling through the terrible weather and storms in Equestria. His lack of letters filled her mother with incredible worry.
AJ can understand it too. She remembers the worry she felt when she first stopped getting letters from Coloratura. That was also in the past, though. Applejack spent her current days moving. She had found a nice house, not too far out of the town she had lived in her entire life, and was starting to settle. Big Mac and Miss. Cheerilee had settled, and gotten married. AJ wasn’t told to move, but with Apple Bloom away in college, she didn’t see a reason to stay. Cheerilee would help granny do chores, and she would come back to do farm work, every day.
It was time for her to move on finally. Stop pretending that most of the time she wasn’t stuck in the past.
The only winter time Apple family reunion had happened when she was in high school. In the summer that preceded the event, Applejack’ mother had passed away. The funeral hadn’t been held with the Apples, but with the Oranges, which lead to several disputes between the two families, both thinking that they should be able to host. The Apples because of the relation the woman had had with the family for all the years she had; the Oranges was, of course do to blood connections.
Applejack had been working as a counselor at the camp she had attended since she was a filly. It was her second year working as a counselor. Camp was one of the only things that got her away from the farm work at home. AJ had, since her father’s death, become a bit of a recluse. She buried herself in her farm work and family. She skipped school most days, something that had gotten her held back a year.
Camp however was different. It was work, in many ways, but also a welcome distraction. She got to work with colts and fillies that had nothing to do with her home. And she got to spend time with Coloratura. Years later, when they met again, they both lied about the relationship that they had. When her mother passed away, all of those distractions were yanked away from her.
She returned from camp on a train the next day, and went to the funeral, where she and her siblings stood in a hot stuffy room in a funeral parlor in Manehattan, dressed in black ties and gowns. She can still remember how Big Mac cried throughout the funeral, so did Apple Bloom. Applejack couldn’t though. There was too much pride in her to cry.
The rest of the year had been spent sending letters to Coloratura, avoiding school, and doing more farm work. Winter and the arrival of her relatives had been something that she had, in many ways, been dreading. She didn’t want to reminders, and she certainly didn’t want the apologies that she would get. She hadn’t liked them when her father died either. It made her feel like everyone was pitying her. She didn’t need pity.
The day of the family reunion was sunny, late winter would soon be melting the snow, and the winter wrap up would commence. Applejack looked forward to the return of more regular farm work. It was still to cold to be out without her jacket though, and a scarf. The scarf was something her mother had given to her, and was now worn with use. She left the house that morning before anyone got there. She wrote a letter to Coloratura, explaining how she felt about the entire affair. They wrote each other every few days.
She was surprised when, at the mailbox she found a letter from the musical pony. She tossed her letter in the box. She blushed a bit, her body feeling hot and prickly. She would read it later. In secret. The relationship AJ and Coloratura shared was a secret. She wasn’t sure if her family would accept it, (She wasn’t sure if she accepted it) so she took care to only read her letters when she found alone time.
She placed the letter in the pocket of her jacket, and went out for the morning. She spent a bit of time with her acquaintance Rainbow Dash. Applejack doesn’t remember what they did though, not anymore, it was a trivial moment compared to the rest of that day. She mostly them remembers getting a bit drunk with Berry Punch, before going home.
The Apple family had arrived by the time she returned and the snow covered farm was swarmed with her colorful relatives. She panicked, her heart rate increasing. She hadn’t seen any of them since her father’s funeral. She didn’t want to be pitied.
It happened though. It was Apple Fritter who starts it. Her slightly older cousin approaching her. “Hey AJ, long time no see, sorry ‘bout yer ma” Applejack remembers how hard it was to force that smile. Every ounce of her wanted to cry, or run away, or punch the other girl. Everything in her screamed fight or flight. She smiled though.
“Aw thanks Fritter, I ‘preciate the sentiment” She said. Applejack spent the rest of the day pretending the pity she was getting was worth it. She felt terrible, but she had since her mother’s passing really. She was thinking about death a lot, her own. Her families, Coloraturas. How many more ponies that she loved would she lose?
That evening she, her older brother, and several of their cousins got drunk on the cider reserve. The cellar was dark and cold, but the way the cider had warmed her body that night made it okay. Applejack wanted more booze when they were called up by one of her uncles. The family had started a bonfire, and everyone was ‘encouraged’ to join. She knew that this meant that she had to go.
Her insides felt hot and prickly for the second time that day, and she remembers the rest of the evening only in vignettes, mostly through what she had been told. She pieced it together well enough in her mind at least.
The bonfire was warm, and a couple of her cousins asked about walking across the lake to go and look in the grove of pine trees for more wood to burn. She knew that she shouldn’t have. She knew at the time that the lake wouldn’t have been sturdy enough. She had seen the ice cracking and thinning more every day. A new, light coating of snow made this hard to see.
“Yeah, I’ll do it. Fritter wanna come with me” She still isn’t sure why she choose Fritter. Was it a hope to get revenge for the apology? Had she wanted Fritter to witness anything bad that happened? Fritter agreed, and they silently walked onto the ice. AJ was too either too drunk to feel the ice as it started to crack, or she just didn’t care. Fritter had never known the feeling of thin ice cracking beneath her feet. She was naïve.
Applejack doesn’t remember the walk, but she remembers the feeling of her heart flying into her chest, when, at about half way through she felt her foot go through the ice. The icy water jolted her from her thoughts, she suddenly longed for the shore. “I think we need to turn around” She said, trying to stay calm.
Fritter stepped backwards, slowly. Her body moved slowly, a bit worried by the words of her cousins. Its Applejacks own step that ruins everything. Fritter yelled something as AJ fell through. But she wasn’t sure what it was.
Her entire world was changed in that moment. Her body was surrounded in water that was so cold it burned. Her head churned. Her body sunk, her scarf the only thing visible to her. The water stung her eyes and lungs as she gasped and struggled and swallowed water.
She was lucky that the lake wasn’t that deep. Her hooves hit the ground after a few moments, but she was in shock. Her thoughts turned to Coloratura. What would Coloratura think when she found out that her special somepony was dead. Coloratura had never faced the turmoil of death.
Applejack, in that moment, thought of her girlfriend. Coloratura had a niche for the dramatic, she was a stupid drunk. What if Coloratura got drunk before her funeral? What would Coloratura have done if she was the one standing with her? Her lungs burned, she felt numb. Maybe that was the reason why the orange earth pony started kicked up.
The next thing she remembered was standing by the fire. Her jacket and scarf were besides her. Her family watched her intently, no one knew what to say. Fritter was crying. She remembers throwing up icy water and cider while Granny Smith pats her back. “Better out than in” She said. Applejack remembers those words so distinctly, that even hearing them now brings her back to that night.
The fire burned hotly, but AJ couldn’t warm up. She remembered the letter. Coloraturas letter! It had been in her pocket. She reached for it, panicky still. She fumbled with it for a while before someone helped her. She doesn’t remember anymore who it was.
The letter is waterlogged, and when she ripped the envelope open, the soggy paper was weighted down. The ink had smeared and bled. If she wasn’t still drunk maybe she would have noticed it before she opened it up. The paper was a blotted mixture of light and dark blue splotches. It broke apart as she held it.
Maybe it had been for the better. AJ would later learn what the letter said. But that day added to the stress. She felt as though someone had compressed her shoulders. She still felt like she was choking. When she thinks back to that night, she can remember the feeling the cold water left on her warm insides.
She has nightmares still. Where Coloratura had watched her fall through. In these dreams she is a teenager again, and she struggles to stay alive. Usually she wakes up once her lungs are burning with waterlog. It is her least favorite dream. But she still jokes about the event every year at the family reunion.
Building the treehouse was the first thing she had done without her father. He had helped her with the blueprints, they had planned to do it together. Her mother had provided the minimal help she could. Ms. Murcott was grieving too though. Harden than her children knew. Every morning all summer Ms. Murcott and her daughter went out to the tree to do work. Often times, they left with splinters, it was though, good bonding.
She remembers when her mother came to help the first time. Applejack was standing on her hand legs, trying to hammer one of the supports in. Her mother had approached behind her, mumbling softly, but audibly “Oh Bramley, how could you do this to us.” At the time, Applejack had teared up. Her mother had said her father’s name so powerfully.
Applejacks first understanding of hard work was forged in that very treehouse. She found that spirits rose when she and her mother were hard at work. Her mother didn’t do much of it, but at the very least Murcott Mandarin came to check on her daughter. Applejack didn’t know this until much later in her life, but she and her mother were going through the same boughs of suffering.
Her mother got sick shortly before her grandfather died. But the symptoms had stayed hidden. It was, only after a few short months of working on the treehouse that she appeared truly ill, The treehouse was left unfinished for half of a year. AJ hadn’t understood the sickness at first, it didn’t come with the normal symptoms, and her mother had just looked tired. Even in failing health though, Ms. Murcott remained strong. Applejack remembers a particular Thanksgiving. Hearth Warming Eve was always spent back at the farm, but when her mother was alive, Thanksgiving took place in Manehatten.
The morning before the train ride Applejack woke up late. She laid in bed for too long, and when she finally emerged from her room, she noticed Apple Bloom was doing homework in the dining room, Granny Smith was helping her. Big Mac was reading in the living room, the almanac from the year before sat propped in front of him. Her mother had at first been nowhere to be seen. Not until she yanked the bathroom door open.
Ms. Murcott Mandarin was taking care of her makeup. Applejack stood. The simple farm pony rarely saw her mother in makeup. She isn’t sure, even when she looks back on it, if she watched that day because she was interested in her mother’s meticulous use of her hooves, of it she simply had to pee.
Applejack stood and watched as her mother, who looked so very very tired, applied the thin black eyeliner so very carefully. It winged out, hiding the crows foot wrinkle besides her eye. “Can you get me some cider dear?”
“Ma it ain’t even lunch time” AJ hadn’t seen her mother drink since before her father died. She didn’t hesitate much after her mother gave her a stern look. Her hooves carried her through the living room. Big Mac was still reading.
Then of course to the dining room, where, as she grabbed the cider and a class from the cabinet she heard Apple Bloom, still such a young filly asking Granny Smith “What’r you thankful for” Her grandmother always answered the same.
“The love I get from my family” Applejack had heard the same phrase said year after year, but this was the first time she was so surprised by it. She realized that in her life, she couldn’t remember her Mother ever saying that she loved her children. There was a bitterness in her that day, a feeling she can still remember. Now though, she understood that her Mother had never needed to tell them that she loved them.
She stood, after giving her mother the cider, and watched her sip at it slowly, standing across the hall from the women. Her eyes watched now as she women applied mascara, blinking it on. Her mother looked young in that moment. Finishing she looked at her daughter.
“Do you want me to do yours too?” She asked. AJ was taken off guard by her mother. She shook her head slightly. She didn’t need to dress up fancy to impress the family. Her mother didn’t waste her time to nod or do anything in return, just stood still for a moment or two before putting her hair up in a bun.
They loved each other as mother and daughter should, but there had always been something between them. Applejack now realizes that it was the mutual depression that they had shared after the death of her father. Turning away from her mother, the orange mare sighed. She walked through the living room, watching Big Macintosh start to go upstairs to get better. She noticed that her mother had rearranged the furniture again, she hadn’t picked that up before. She notices first that grandfather’s chair is nowhere to be seen. The radio had been updated. Her sense of nostalgia felt shattered. The throw rug and couch were in unfamiliar places. It made her uncomfortable, she struggled to shake it off as she continued through the house.
She walked into the kitchen, seeing her grandmother, and younger sister sitting together. She was monotonous as she walked to the sink, there was nothing special about that moment. She took a drink, and went to her room. Standing there is when she caught her reflection. The same coat color as her mother. The same mane color. Out of all of her siblings she looked the most like her mother. A nearly identical copy. It caught her off guard at the time. As she realized how old and tired her mother looked, compared to her.
Applejack understands now, as she unpacks a mirror in her new town home. She understands more now about her mother than she ever had as a filly. She sees the crow’s feet beginning to form, and even more than that, she sees the tired circles under her eyes. They were the same. But, did that doom her to the same fate it doomed her mother too?