Cross My Heart
Leaf Green sat on a hillside outside of what might commonly be referred to as the edge of the township of Ponyville. It was a scenic view. Picturesque. Appropriate. It had been difficult to get here, but he felt that the effort had been worth it. After all, it would never do to have the dingy walls and dirty floors of the cramped second-story apartment he rented to be the backdrop for the scene about to play out. He lifted a hoof and shaded his eyes from the burning, setting sun. Idly, he let the hoof fall to the grass beside him as he rested his back against a tree, taking deep breaths in through the nose, for the first time in as long as he could remember truly savoring the simple mechanism of breathing. He smiled.
“Sometimes the quickest ways to lose a friend...”
He let the statement hang in the air, the unfinished phrase acting as a summons to the one pony he wanted to see more than anything right now. He waited.
Nothing.
Oh well.
He could wait.
He still had time.
The sun was gradually settling beyond the horizon. The world was painted in colors that for the first time he felt able to comprehend. It does much for a sense of clarity, he mused. So much less static.
He had come up to this hill for two reasons. Firstly because it was the most appropriate setting he could think of, and secondly because it was removed enough from Her beaten path that if She did show up, it would prove Something.
He wondered what it would feel like.
“I can’t believe Pinkie Pie isn’t here to see this, sure is too bad...-”
He flipped over a rock with his hoof, and strained his ears, listening for a telltale giggle to drift in over the wind.
Nothing.
Oh well.
He still had time.
Not for the first time, Leaf tried to summarize what was Wrong with him in a word. Not for the first time, he was at a loss to put it into a coherent thought, much less words that he could give to the frustrated and confused ponies in his life. No one word seemed appropriate, no singular malady seemed to summarize. He was, he mused simply, Not Well, and (not for the first time) he figured that that would have to do as far as labels went. He was unhappy, and while that word meant a great deal for sad-looking foals sitting tearfully in front of fallen scoops of ice cream, it actually meant very little when applied to what should be by most metrics a normal stallion. A better word, that Leaf often seemed to rediscover in his never-ending quest to find some explanation, was that he was Joyless. And a heart that is Joyless might as well not beat at all, he had proclaimed to the dirty laundry and dingy walls of his grimy apartment, toasting his insight again for good measure.
Leaf green did not enjoy parties. If anything, that was what had first attracted Her to Him. Even though (in his mind he has stressed) it had never been Like That. She had been focused on Leaf because he was a self-proclaimed party-pooper, an Anti-Pinkie, and while opposite charges may attract; ponies are somewhat more complicated than elementary particles. She had taken his melancholy as a challenge and He, seeing for the first time that someone would not be immediately put out by his enforced cynicism, had taken the attention to heart.
And eventually taken it a step (or two) too far.
“But that was besides the point,” he mumbled to himself.
“I wonder what Pinkie Pie is up to...” he exclaimed to the air, giving what he imagined was a faux-disinterested spin to the phrase.
His words no longer came coherently, and his thoughts were stretching taffy-like and losing the ideas they were trying to hold but he was too far gone to notice.
He listened. The wind.
Nothing.
Silence.
Oh well, he thought, I still have time.
Pinkie had solemnly sworn on several occasions that She would get Him to Laugh, and while the words were delivered with the somber intonations of a court judge passing sentence, her eyes had sparkled when she had said it.
She was genuinely enraptured with making somepony happy when they had been sad, and in time he too had come to share her enthusiasm—if not her intention.
"Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!" She had laughingly promised, when he, pretending to be exasperated with the mare, had asked sarcastically if she was going to send him invitations forever, even though he never came to any of her silly parties.
For once, it was nice to have someone who cared enough about anything about him to attempt to scale the walls that he had built around himself.
Time and time again he had found his mailbox (usually only visited by notices of Payment Due, and of Bargains Offered) containing pink (always Pink) invitations to the multiple and nigh-weekly events hosted by the exuberant pink pony. He kept them all, in a box that he kept under his bed, though he never attended any of them. Sometimes, he would take the box out and look at the stack of pink letters and think—maybe just one—and the sudden swelling of his heart would almost kill him, and he would savor the stabbing emotion it caused for as long as he could.
He thought he loved her.
He knew that he really didn't love anyone.
“I sure wish my friend Pinkie Pie were here...”
He looked up into the spreading boughs of the three above him, expecting and yet not expecting that perfect smile to be beaming down at him, since this was the first time he had said out loud the words ‘friend’ and ‘Pinkie’ in conjunction with each other.
Nothing.
He yawned, a long, long yawn that somehow left him with less air that when he started. He rested his chin on his fore hooves and blinked sleepily at the sunset turning the hills in the horizon amber and gold.
When the ponies who would eventually bear Elements against a fallen God had taken most of Pinkie Pie’s attention, Leaf Green was one of the ponies who could be heard openly supporting the idea
“At least it’s something to keep her out of our manes,” he remembered grousing.
He knew that he was imagining it, mostly. Mostly.
There were fewer invitations in his box as the weeks went on. At first it was just one or two—a gardening party that he wasn’t invited to, a foal’s Mark ceremony that he wasn’t asked to attend. Then, it had happened. He had been going about his business, just maintaining, when he had heard Her laugh in the distance, and spied her walking with some of her friends. Bouncing, chattering, just so happy, and for a moment he had been happy for Her too. Then he had overheard the drifting tail of their conversation.
“—my best birthday party ever!”
And he had stood, frozen where the words had struck him. To not be invited to an alligators birthday was one thing, but for her to just assume...for her to finally... no. It didn't bear thinking about.
That had been yesterday. That evening he had taken the box and sat on his bed, not opening it, not re-reading the pink-scented contents and flowery ‘you-are-cordially-inviteds’ just sitting, thinking. Looking at the label on the outside of a bright orange pill bottle.
Underneath the tree, Leaf Green’s head jerked up from where it had been resting, his eyelids springing open. He was just so tired. His tongue felt thick in his mouth and his words were no longer intelligible.
“I sure could... go for a party right about now...”
He listened, ears lethargically swiveling to and fro.
Nothing.
Oh well, he thought. Oh well.
He was just so tired.
Leaf Green lay underneath the leaves of an oak tree outside of Ponyvillie, in the growing dusk.
Beside him there was a simple cardboard box filled with invitations to parties he never attended.