“FLIM!!”

He had his back to her, but at the sound of his name, he turned around, not even attempting to force a smile. “What is it, sweetheart?”

“Oh, no!” she said as she stomped into the room. “Don’t you dare---“

Her voice wavered once she looked him up and down. “Wh---the gown is---!”

“Oh, that?” Propping himself against the wall, he slid a hoof up under his arm and pinned it into place against the wound. Even though his heartbeat had slowed, each pulse was still forcing some blood to ooze out. “It’s nothing. I, er, popped a few stitches.”

She glanced about her; she hadn’t expected to catch him so far from his room. “What’re you doin’ out here?”

A pained look went across his features. “I just… needed to clear my head.”

That only deepened the dark knot in her chest. You can take a nice little stroll now, but you couldn’t bother to make it to the ultrasound?! “Well, get back t’yer room. I don’t wanna do this out here.”

“I’m not up for much walking right now.” It seemed he had just noticed her sour expression. “And what don’t you want to do out here? Because if it involves exchanging fluids, sweetheart, I think I should get stitched up before---“

“Oh, no. Oh, don’t you dare.” She rounded on him, making him flinch back against the wall. “I shoulda known better than to trust the likes a’you!”

“What---“

“You been runnin’ yer mouth a whole lot since ya got here, Flim, but not once---not ONCE!---didja ever bother to tell me the truth!”

His eyebrows arched, but the look of innocent surprise was quickly gone, a more reticent one taking its place. “What are you talking about, exactly?”

“Oh, I think you know what I’m talking about. Exactly.” She turned her head against her body and seized her saddlebags in her teeth. Her lips were still peeled back when she pried it loose and dropped it on the floor between them. Flim hesitantly reached for it, but she slammed a hoof down on the buckle; before she showed him the evidence, she wanted to give him just enough rope to hang himself. “To think how well I been treatin’ you, only t’find out you been lyin’ yer way into my---“ Her tongue jerked back in her mouth just as she was about to say heart. “---bed.”

“I’ve never told you a lie,” he countered with the beginnings of a frown. “Not. Once.”

In the periphery of her vision, she sensed some of the hospital staff pausing in their rounds to gawk---but, for some reason, she couldn’t be bothered to care. Adrenalin was shooting through her faster and faster, making her muscles feel like jelly. “Oh yeah? What about the headmaster’s daughter, huh? What about that sweet lil’ story you fed me?”

“What about it?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb.” Still keeping the saddlebag out of his reach, she began to pull the tie back, loosening the buckle. “The headmaster didn’t even have a daughter, did he?”

His neck had been drooping, but that startled him enough to look her in the eye---and that’s where she saw a strange little gleam. Was it fear, or genuine curiosity? Either way, she gave him ten seconds to respond before repeating “Did he?!”

He looked at her warily, his ears moving back and forth through his mane. “Now why would you say something like that?”

She let out a caustic laugh. “Evading the question. Ain’t that jes’ typical!”

“Applejack, I am in no mood---“

“ANSWER ME!”

The force of her holler made him shrink back into his hunched shoulders. For a moment neither spoke, her short, shallow breaths puffing against his cheek; then he closed his eyes, slowly licked his dry lips, and mumbled “…No.”

“What? Speak up!”

Like a popping cork, his temper suddenly blew out---much faster than she’d expected---and he threw his forelegs in the air in exasperation, even though it made him grimace with pain. “You heard me! No! He didn’t have a daughter!” He sarcastically motioned towards her head, as if placing an invisible crown. “Congratulations, Applejack, you finally figured it out! I’ll have them engrave your name on the trophy for last place!”

“Don’t you talk t’me like that, you—you---”

“Liar?” he snapped. He tapped his temple, then hers. “Think, Applejack, think! When did I say the words ‘the headmaster’s daughter’? When did those words come out of my mouth?”

Her lips thinned into her teeth. No. No, she was not going to admit he had her on a technicality! “Flim, there’s such a thing as ‘lying by omission’!”

“You made an assumption, and I didn’t bother correcting you. You can’t blame me for your own ignorance.”

The flush on her face darkened and she began to splutter. “Wh---you!---“

He took the opportunity to gingerly rise to his hooves and begin the slow trudge back to his room. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get re-stitched.”

Applejack’s tail was lashing against her legs as she thumped a hoof on the tiles. The foal twisted around and gave what felt like an answering kick against her gallbladder. “Don’t you turn yer back on me! Turn around an’ face the facts like a stallion, if that is what you are!”

At that, he paused, and she could clearly see his coat bristle up along his spine like porcupine quills. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “What was that?”

“Turn around an’ face me!”

So he did. He turned back around. And when he did, the fury on his face was almost enough to make her falter. “Why?”

The iciness in that one little word made her shiver more than if he had shouted it. But she wasn’t about to back down. “Because I said so! Now you look me in the eye and explain this.”

His gaze followed her foreleg down to the hoof, and his lips parted when he saw what she was pointing at. “Wha---wait! Where did you get those?”

“Doesn’t matter. Explain it!”

His aura encircled the pictures, and tugged them from underneath her hoof. For a moment or two he stared at them the way a scientist might examine a specimen, his mouth moving around in wordless shapes---then, before she could even react, he’d flicked the photograph up off the floor and against her face, the corner nicking at her cheek. “Are you blind? What does this look like to you? What needs explaining?!”

“Everything about it!“

“Oh, I’m SO sorry. Does this confuse you, Applejack?” he snarled, advancing on her. The short hairs on her neck began to prickle; for the first time, she noticed that something serious had changed about him. His red-rimmed eyes suddenly seemed much older than yesterday, the last time she’d looked deeply into them. “How was it you put it, again? You weren’t raised to go ‘swinging around like that’?”

“Y-yeah. Exactly.” Without moving her head, she looked to the right. Shit. They’d already drawn a crowd. Off to one side, the nurse who had made her fall backwards the other day was shooing a candystriper away.

“You ‘pick a side and you stick to it’. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”

He’d said it with so much venom that her flesh pricked with goosebumps. Baring her teeth, she pushed her snout up against his, blocking him from moving forward any further. “Don’t you call me that.”

“Why not? What’s changed, Applejack?”

“Everything! Everything’s changed!” She didn’t even care that she was screaming. “I only let you go an’ run yer hooves up an’ around me because I thought you were somethin’ special, Flim!” She stamped and darted her head away, because fresh new tears were blinking in her eyes. They felt hot and sticky against her cheeks and lashes. “You treated me like you really cared---like you WANTED t’hold a mare in yer arms!---an’ then, an’ then I find out yer nothin’ but a---“

“But a WHAT?!”

“I don’t know! I don’t even know if there’s a word fer it!”

He’d stopped clutching at his wound---both forehooves were on the ground. “It’s called ‘bisexual’, Applejack. It’s really not that difficult.”

“Sure it is!” She spared a quick peek down at the photographs, her lips trembling. “What kinda wires got crossed in yer brain t’make you this way, huh?”

He scoffed. “What do you think I am, a machine? I was born, not assembled in a factory!”

“Well if y’ask me, yer more mixed up than wet concrete in an earthquake! Did yer mama drink lye when she was pregnant or somethin’?”

The sudden pallor on his face would have been startling, had she noticed it. “Applejack. You be careful what you say, because you are treading on very thin ice right now.”

But her rant wasn’t over: “Even if I did settle down with you---which I’m not---how could I ever know you’d want me fer me? After all, I can’t do”---she fumbled with the photos before scooping one up---“this t’you, now, can I?”

“With the right equipment, you could do a reasonable facsimile---“

“Shut up!” The muscle running along her jaw spasmsed as she clenched her molars together. There were times when she could put up with his sarcasm, but this was definitely not one of them! “How could I possibly know you wouldn’t go chasin’ after some stallion?”

He did his best to shrug. “You’d have to trust me.”

“TRUST YOU?! After this?”

His whole face seemed to sag, his earlier anger melting into an expression she was having trouble reading. “Applejack…”

In a few clumsy movements, he pulled the gown over his head, rolled it up, and then pushed it up against his injury. She was so used to seeing him dressed that he suddenly seemed vulnerable and naked. “Listen. I don’t normally put up with this kind of shit---“

“ExCUSE me?!”

“---But I’ll do my best to explain,” he said, pretending he hadn’t heard the interjection. “Just because I’m attracted to more than one gender doesn’t mean I’d be incapable of monogamy. If I chose to be with you, that would be my choice to make.” His ears perked a bit. “Besides, you’re attracted to other stallions, too---shouldn’t I be just as worried you’d go running off with somepony else?”

“No! That ain’t the same! I know which team I wanna play on! I’m not confused!”

“Neither am I!” The spark in his eyes was back. “I have known who and what I am since I was a colt, Applejack, and I can guarantee you I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life!” It looked like he was about to say something else when he paused---and then he got that smirk that made her guts twist up. “If anything, I’d say you’re the confused one. Didn’t you try seafood fishing with Rainbow Da---“

Had she stuffed her hoof in his mouth any faster, she probably would have chipped his teeth. “Shush!!”

A glance over her shoulder, and her stomach dropped even farther. Dammit! One of the receptionists was trying in vain to hide her smile. Turning back to Flim, she hissed “I told you that in confidence!”

He pushed her hoof off his muzzle. “Well you’re the one who wanted to make a scene.”

“I-I didn’t know you’d---!“ She had to take a few deep breaths before she could speak again: “I told you that in private, Flim, an’ besides, I told you. You been keepin’ yer antics a secret!”

“You never asked.”

“ARGH! You fuckin’ slimy little snake!” The photo made a fluttery noise as she tore it between her hooves, Soarin’s’ face falling to one side, Flim’s to the other, and something that looked like an interrupted gelding operation between them.

“Damn. I was planning on keeping that one,” he muttered.

“Why? So you could fantasize about him while sleepin’ with me?”

“No. No, it’s not like that. Not at all. It’s just---” He gestured helplessly in front of him. “These were supposed to be private---“

“You shoulda told me!” she shouted, each word rising higher and higher. “You shoulda told me!”

“And if I had, would you have let me come within ten feet of you again?”

“HELL no!” A foreleg wound its protective way around her midsection. “Who knows what kinda diseases you’d be bringin’ home t’me!”

He pressed his frog against his forehead, as if trying to squeeze away a headache. “DISEASES? Are you kidding me?!”

“Does it look like I’m jokin’?”

When he opened his mouth, she added “Don’t answer that.”

They stared each other down for a minute, even though Applejack was still blinking her wet eyes. Flim spoke first: “You have to believe me, sweetheart… I was going to tell you. Eventually. But when you started talking about teams and sides… ” Breaking the stare-down, he drew in a shaky breath and sighed. “I just don’t understand. Why does this upset you so much, anyway?”

“Remember when we were talkin’ about our firsts, Flim?” she said. “Remember that? I told you about the colt I first let into my bed.”

“Yes, and?”

“I…I…” She wasn’t sure how to explain it; her thoughts were loose and rattling around in her head, and the waves of emotion certainly didn’t help. “He was always rarin’ to go, y’know? Like a lotta teenaged colts, he could ‘salute’ at the drop of a hat. An’ he kept on pressurin’ me t’go farther than I wanted to, and---" Hot mucous was gathering in her throat; she swallowed it down again and again, but still it kept rising. “And I gave in. I finally gave in! I figured I oughta be a good filly an’ take care a’my coltfriend and his… needs.”

The deep, hard frown-lines on Flim’s face began to lighten.

She shuffled, adjusted her weight so it was resting on her haunches, and drew her forelegs around the top of her belly. Scuffing her fetlocks around her elbows, she went on: “And---and y’know what? It was nice. Fer awhile, he was real sweet. He’d bring me flowers… Take me on picnics…"

He leaned towards her with some hesitancy when he thought he saw a softer expression in her downcast eyes. But it was gone when she sucked her breath in, her whole face clenching up in a pinch. “And then, BAM!” she said with a jab to the air, “Outta nowhere, he went an’ left me fer another colt! I-I wasn’t enough fer him, even though I gave him my---"

She smacked his outreached hoof away. He didn’t wince; it seemed like he had been expecting it.

“I gave him my cherry,” she went on in a near-whisper, “And all he gave me in return was a lotta heartache…" Then she snorted. “As well as somethin’ that cleared up in six to eight weeks with the right medication.”

“Applejack---“

She raised a hoof, cutting him off. “I thought you were different,” she said quietly. “But now I know otherwise.”

“What does that mean?”

“You jes’ admitted that the only reason you kept”---she shot a grim look at the torn photograph---“that from me was because you knew I wouldn’t let somepony like you near me again!”

“’Somepony like me’?”

“Yeah, somepony like you! Somepony like him! Somepony who’s got a mind so sex-addled he can’t decide whose crotch he wants to stuff his face into! Because, let’s face it---that’s all I am t’you, ain’t it? Some fun li’l merry-go-round you can ride when y’feel like it?”

“Applejack, if you really believe that, you’re even thicker than you look.”

“Don’t call me THICK!” she screamed, shoving his back against the wall.

“Hey!”

Her throat was clogged and her eyes blurry, so it took her a few seconds to realize who had jostled her to the side. Flam was hovering over his brother, an arm around his shoulders.

“What did you do that for?” he said, glaring at her.

“You shoulda heard what he called me!”

“You should have heard what she called me,” he retorted.

With a frustrated groan, Flam helped Flim back to his hooves. “I can’t believe it. I leave for five minutes, and you’re already fighting like foals on the playground.”

“This is more’n a little squabble, dammit!” There were runny rivulets down her cheeks, and each new gush of tears followed the trail, but she wouldn’t allow herself to begin sobbing. “That bastard you call a brother’s been keepin’ things from me!”

“Well, I doubt he knows everything about you, either---“

“It ain’t like he forgot to tell me his birthday or somethin’! This is serious! He’s---" Trying not to choke on her spit, she pushed out in a ragged voice “He’s, he’s, he’s been lettin’ stallions stuff him like a baked potato and I don’t like it!”

When he saw his brother turning to him, Flim looked away and grumbled “If you say ‘I told you so’, I’ll pop you in the kisser.”

“Look. Let’s just all take some deep breaths,” Flam said as his eyes moved from one to the other. “Flim’s had a really bad day, and you’re hormonal---“

“Don’t talk to me like I’m five! This ain’t got a thing t’do with me bein’ pregnant!” she snapped. “It’s about him! I ain’t in the wrong here!”

“Yes, you are!”

“Brother, don’t shout like that. You’re already ripped open; you don’t want to make it any wor---“

Pushing him aside, Flim took a step towards Applejack and leaned his head in close. The words he spoke were very quiet, but far from gentle: “You are wrong, Applejack, and I have a feeling you always will be. I’m sorry that you had a bad experience with some kid, but---but that’s all it was! That’s all he was, just some messed-up kid! I am a grown stallion, and more importantly, I’m not him.”

“Yer enough like him t’worry me!”

Flim took the ruined gown out from under his arm and passed it to his brother, then stuffed his frog against the still-weeping wound. “You might want to think before you speak, Applejack, because you’re starting to sound like Trixie.”

Flam’s bottom lip pulled out from under his moustache. “Hey.”

“Trixie?!” Her mane tugged to the side as her hackles went up. “Don’t compare me to that stuck-up blowhard! I’m nothin’ like her!”

“Let’s not---“

“Really? Because the way I see it, you’re both more than a little narrow-minded.” He prodded her chest. “How did it feel when she called you a ‘mud pony’, hm?”

“But---that’s---that’s different!” Why did she suddenly feel so flustered? “She was jes’ bein’ rude fer no reason!”

Flam’s ears were folded back. “Come on, now---"

“And I suppose your reason is a good one,” Flim sniffed.

“You bet yer ass it is! You’ve proven yerself untrustworthy, time an’ time again! And this is the last straw, Flim!”

His blood had begun to trickle over his fetlocks and down his chest. “I’ve gone out of my way to prove myself to you! I could have run off while your brother was knocked out, but I didn’t. I could have left when you were at the market, but I didn’t. I could have done any number of things when you weren’t looking, but. I. Didn’t.”

“Oh, come off it! I know why you were stickin’ around, aside from gettin’ to enjoy a little rumpy-pumpy!” She tossed her head towards his twin. “You were jes’ waitin’ fer him to come find you, weren’tcha?!”

“Well… yes,” he said carefully, his eyes not quite settling anywhere. “I was waiting for my brother. You’re right on that, at least. But that doesn’t mean I don’t…!”

And then his voice hitched. The flurry of emotions on his face was drifting into a tight kind of sadness. Finally, he lifted his eyes from the floor and looked at her. “I care about you, sweetheart. Really, I do. But you’re not being fair!”

“I’M not bein’ fair? Yer the one who’s been leadin’ me on!” With a grunt, she moved her body to the left to accommodate the twisting inside her. “What d’you expect me to tell my daughter when she sees her Papa checkin’ out another stallion?”

“Well what am I supposed to tell my daughter if she comes crying to me because her mother won’t accept her?”

“That ain’t gonna happen! I’m-a raise her better than that! Besides, I’d love her no matter what!”

“But you couldn’t love me no matter what.”

That shocked her so much she took a faltering step back.

“Look, I have been trying my hardest here. Do you think this has been easy for me? For Celestia’s sake, what more do I have to do?!”

“I’ll tell you what you gotta do: make up yer mind! Is it gonna be me, or is it gonna be bouncin’ back and forth from mares to stallions?”

He shot her a look that she’d only seen once before in her life---an expression of anger, mixed with a dark resignation. “So you’re asking me to be somepony I’m not.”

“I’m jes’ tellin’ you that you gotta stop actin’ like some kinda whore!”

The words had left her mouth a few seconds before her brain realized what they were, and when it did, she felt a slow, cold, wiggling shame deep inside her. “I, uh, I mean---"

But it was too late. He’d heard it loud and clear. “Wow.”

“That’s---I didn’t---" The words just kept spilling out, even as she fumbled over them. “I meant---"

“Oh, I know what you meant,” he said, his voice full of acid. “You really think you can claim some moral superiority over me?”

“Well, sure I can!”

“That’s quite something coming from Miss Peanut Butter Legs.”

“’Peanut Butter Legs’?” she said, her muzzle all scrunched.

Flim was sneering. “Yeah. They spread easily!”

Even before she felt herself gasp, she reacted---and slapped him as hard as she could across the face.

“Okay, that’s it. We’re leaving.” Flam put an arm around his stunned brother, trying to get him to stand back up. He turned his scowl from Applejack to the rubberneckers behind them. “Show’s over, folks! Go home and tell your families about the exciting day you had!”

“She hit me,” Flim mumbled as he staggered up off the floor.

“To be fair, she slapped you, and you did kind of have that coming. Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time you called a mare that?” It sounded like he was trying to be jovial, but it was falling flat. “Come now, brother. That wound’s not going to stitch itself.”

“W-where d’you think yer going?” she said hoarsely.

Without looking back, Flam said “I told you: we’re leaving.”

“What?! Y’can’t jes’ leave me here!”

Flim yanked himself away from Flam and spun around on the spot, his muzzle up against hers. “Watch me!”

“Flim, you can’t---"

“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do! You have made it abundantly clear that you’re not interested in ‘somepony like me’, so why should I waste any more of my time? Or yours, for that matter?”

“We---" Why did it feel like the room was lurching to the side? “We coulda had something, Flim! This ain’t---"

The hoof on her lips felt surprisingly gentle. “Applejack,” he began slowly, “I think I could have loved you.”

It felt like every organ inside her moved at once, and it wasn’t because of the foal.

“But… I don’t think the reverse is true.” Neither of them watched as Flam busied himself with gathering the scattered photographs. “You might have loved the idea of me, but not…”

He trailed off, running a hoof through his mane. “What you’re asking of me… well, it’s impossible. I could live with you and just you for a hundred years and I still wouldn’t be the nice straight stallion you really want! It’s not something I could do, even if I wanted to, no more than cutting my horn off would make me an Earth pony. It’s not who I am, and…” For a moment he looked older than the Earth itself. “…you just can’t seem to reconcile that.”

Flam put his foreleg between them. “I hate to interrupt, but if you lose any more blood I may be forced to give you mouth-to-mouth, and I don’t think either of us wants that.”

“He’s right.” That’s all he said before turning his back on her again.

“Flim!” She bolted to her hooves, but they seemed rooted in place. “Flim, wait!”

He stopped, but didn’t look back.

“Are you leavin’ this hallway---or this town?”

The silence answered for him.

Instead of coherent thoughts, her brain began popping with hot bursts of light. She wanted to scream, to cuss, to howl at the top of her lungs, but the words she forced out were barely above a whimper: “I’ll sic my brother on your sorry ass! He tracked you down once---he can track you down again!”

“You do that!” Flam snapped. “You do that and he’ll be in leg irons so fast his head will spin!”

He heard her gasp, but didn’t allow her enough time to answer, ticking off each charge with a hoofbeat: “Stalking, breaking and entering, assault with a deadly weapon, coltnapping, false imprisonment, uttering threats, aggravated assault. Would you like me to go on?”

“You… you wouldn’t,” she hissed.

“We won’t if he keeps the hell away from us! Oh, but don’t you worry,” he added when he saw the colour seep from her face, “I’m sure he’ll do well in prison. A big fellow like him won’t end up somepony’s wife.”

Flim groaned and leaned a little more heavily against him. “Come on, Flam. That’s not helping.”

“The point is, Miss Apple,” he continued, “The pony most at fault here is your brother, so don’t place the blame on mine!”

“Flam. Shut up.” He moved as if he was stuck in sludge, but he did manage to meet her eye. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured, still lightly poking his injury, “But… I have to go.”

Somehow she spoke, even though she felt clamped, from the tips of her ears to her soft underhooves. “Flim, you listen’a me and you listen good. If yer jes’ goin’ back t’yer room, fine. Be my guest.”

He nodded. Under a tiny, sandy-coloured spark, the saddlebags slid across the floor, but Flam was the only one who seemed surprised.
Her voice dropped even lower as she placed a hoof on her belly. “But if you leave us here now… don’t you dare come back.”

The two brothers stared at her, and then Flam turned his head. Flim stayed there for a bit longer, but eventually he wilted, his eyes closing, and he turned to follow his twin down the hall. She watched as his tail sunk down between his legs, and the memories of all the times he’d curled it around hers came stabbing at her.

As much as she wanted to call out to him again, something told her it would be useless.

That was it. The dam broke, and she burst into tears, finally letting herself cry openly. Instinct and memory guided her more than her vision could, and she stumbled her way down the hall toward the Mares’ Room. Her chest was heaving in and out, her choked-back sobs threatening to splinter her ribs as she pushed inside. Wash your face, the quiet voice in her head kept saying, You need to wash your face.

“Un-huhn,” she whimpered.

Be a brave girl, and go and wash your face.

She had shuffled nearly to the sink when she realized someone was already standing there, and she froze in her tracks when she saw who it was. “C-Connie?!”

“Who wants to kn---" She’d lifted her head from the water gushing down the drain, and when her eyes focused, Applejack could swear they softened a little. At least, the one that wasn’t disappearing under dark, swelling eyelids did. “Oh. It’s you.”

She wanted to scream, to run, to---to do anything but stare at the red-streaked sink under the older mare’s hooves.

“You look like you’ve been kicked in the chin, sweetness. What happened to you?”

She eyed the bruised flesh on her face. “I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

Turning off the taps, she yanked a few paper towels from the dispenser and started blotting them against her cheeks. “I asked first.”

Applejack pressed her lip against her lower teeth, trying as hard as she could to keep from bawling like a baby again. She couldn’t---not now. “Flim happened to me,” she whispered.

“Oh,” was all she said for a few long, tense minutes. Then, turning to the mirror, she added “That was my answer, too.”

“He---?” There it was again, that catch of bile in her throat. Connie’s lips looked like the smashed worms that floated on sidewalks after a rainstorm. “He beat you?!”

“Mm-hm.”

“Oh Celestia.” She looked despondently down at her hooves; after a moment, a wad of balled-up toilet paper was floated over to her. She took it and gingerly pressed it against the drying tears. “I knew---I jes’ knew it! I knew I made the right decision!”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t marry him!” she said with a sudden fierceness. “I can’t marry a stallion who beats on mares!” Sinking to her haunches, she pulled her forelegs up against her body. “Who knows what he’d do to me---"

“Hey.”

She only had a second to glance at the hoof before it was under her chin, tilting her head up, but she’d noticed something odd---it wasn’t scuffed in the slightest. No sign of resistance, no self-defense. She jes’ lay there an’ took it? It didn’t even look like she’d put her arms over her face to protect herself.

“To be honest, I think Flim’s wanted to take a swing at me for years,” Connie said. She was jerking Applejack’s head to and fro in an attempt to make eye contact. “He wouldn’t raise his hoof to you---not ever.”

She yanked herself away. “I don’t care! I still ain’t gonna marry him! In fact, I, I---"

Somepony behind them opened the door, took one look at the scene before her, and quickly retreated from the bathroom.

“I’m never lettin’ him touch me again,” she finished, her eyes and mouth all hot.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Connie reach out to her, but just as she was about to turn and stomp off, she noticed what was being offered wasn’t a comforting pat, but an opened flask.

“Jeez, what don’t you carry in that purse?” she said with a weak laugh.

“Foundation,” she replied, studying her freshly-marred reflection. “I carry a stick of concealer on me, but I don’t think that’s going to cover this.”

Applejack pushed the flask away, a little shiver going up her spine when her hooftip pierced the magical aura. “I can’t drink, Connie. In case y’forgot, I’m pregnant.”

“More for me, then.”

Whatever was in there smelled eighty-proof at least, but she downed three gulps without so much as a wince. Easily flicking the cap back in place, she shook her head a little and let out a sigh. “Ahh. Much better.”

“You shouldn’t drink so much after losin’ blood---"

But she was interrupted. “What did he do to you?”

“He---he called---he said I---" Strange. It had happened mere minutes ago, and yet the whole fight was blurry in her mind, everything they’d said tangled like a snarl of yarn. She decided to start at the end, and see if she could work her way back to the beginning: “Didja know he was queer?!”

Connie looked up, surprised. “Well of course I did. Didn’t you?”

Applejack’s eyes wavered for a moment, and then drifted away. She heard a little giggle escape, and turned back to glare at her.

“Celestia’s tits!” she said with a hoof over her mouth. “You really had no idea?”

“Don’t laugh at me!” she spat.

“Oh, sweetness…” Turning her back to the sinks, she drooped her still-grinning face down and slumped into a sitting position. She was shaking her head, and it was obvious she was trying not to laugh. “I’ve known he was queer since he was three years old.” She rested her chin on her hoof and gave Applejack the warmest smile she’d seen yet. “He wanted to be the Mane-iac for Nightmare Night.”

In any other circumstance, she probably would have laughed. Now she just felt sick.

“Oh! And about a year after that, he asked why the handsome prince always rescues a princess instead of another prince. I had to wait another thirteen years before he told me, and when he did, I just said ‘I know’.” She sloshed her flask around, trying to judge how much was left. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re a blubbering mess. It’s not contagious, you know.” Another shot, and had she not been wearing lipstick, the smirk on her face would have looked exactly like Flim’s. “If it was, I would have exposed myself to it long ago. Stallions can be such pigs.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, and her body began to shake anew. Her eyes were sore and puffy after so much crying, so all she could do was sink down to the floor. She hadn’t realized how hot her face had become until her cheek brushed the cool linoleum. The soothing, kind voice she sometimes heard in her thoughts was gone, a harder one now ringing in its place: Look at you. Cryin’ and lyin’ on a dirty bathroom floor, and all because a‘what? Some jerk? Y’sure are pathetic, AJ.

“Did he cheat on you?”

“N-n-no…”

“Then why are you sniveling like that?”

She couldn’t answer. What was she supposed to say? That Flim never actually lied, but he never told the whole truth? That she was now, just this very moment, starting to realize that it may have been her own careless, hurtful words that made him keep that secret hidden, locked away inside…?

“Hey.” Instead of helping her up, Connie folded her legs under her body and lowered her head to the floor beside Applejack’s. “C’mon. Buck up, kiddo.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.” She touched her cheek. “Haven’t you ever been taught to listen to your elder ponies? Stallions are a dime a dozen. Trust me.”

“No, they’re not,” she mumbled, hating how simpering it sounded.

“So he broke your heart. So what? You’re young, you’re pretty. You’ll snag a new one soon.”

She tried to speak. All she wanted to say was ’I don’t WANT another one’, but the words just weren’t there. “W-why aintcha stickin’ up fer him, huh? He’s yer brother!”

Connie raised herself off the floor and made a feeble attempt to pat the dust off her ankles. “I tried meddling in his love life once. It... was unpleasant, to say the least.” She unpinned her bun and shook her curls loose. “Where iff he now?” she said around the hairpin in her teeth.

“I… I dunno. I think he went back to his room.” The sight of his half-split gash flashed in her mind, and she tried to shrug it away. That’s when she spotted something, one little detail that had eluded her before: now that Connie was fussing with her mane, sitting on her haunches with her forelegs over her head, her belly was exposed---and there was a paper-fine white scar running horizontally over her teats.

“A word to the wise, sweetness?” she said as she tucked the last lock into place. “I don’t think he wants to see either of us for quite awhile. Give him some space, yeah?”

“…A’course.”

She gave her muddied reflection a final once-over. “Well, that’s as good as it’s going to get.” Again she fiddled with her purse, and plucked a card from one of the inner pockets. “Here,” she said, extending it towards Applejack, “It’s my information. My P.O. box, my agent’s name, and pretty much anything else I could squeeze on there.”

When she realized Applejack wasn’t going to take it, she placed it on the corner of the counter, away from the splashes she’d made. “If the baby needs something, you let me know.”

There was a spurt of feeling right under her heart, but she didn’t really know what it was. “Why?”

The door was already swinging shut behind her.

Spike opened the door on the third knock, but instead of greeting their guest, he turned to call over his shoulder: “Hey, Twilight? How much ice cream do we have left?”

He could hear her sigh echo down the staircase. “About three quarts, but don’t even think about it, Spike. You’ll spoil your appetite.”

“It’s, uh…” He looked Applejack up and down, and raised a claw to cup her tear-stained cheek. “It’s not for me.”

Author's Notes:

The end!

I'm kidding, of course. This is far from the end. We gotta get that baby born, don't we? Besides, these two need to do a lot of growing up themselves.

Sorry about the delay, but this chapter was incredibly hard to write! This is one of the few chapters I had planned out in my head from early on, but getting it on "paper" was really tricky. Thanks for sticking by me, y'all