“I’ll put it in words you understand.”

The pony who’d called himself Babs’ uncle had said that once, just before everything changed for good. Even thinking about it conjured memories of the incident almost instantly, the way he’d cornered her and Apple Bloom in the blooming orchard. The way he’d put a question into her mind that she’d never even considered.

“Your cutie mark is a shield, just like your friends,” he’d explained, staring straight into Apple Bloom’s eyes. The other foal stared straight back, not quite knowing what he was up to, but still suspicious of everything about them. The pony who called himself Babs’ uncle was a bad stallion who brought trouble everywhere he went, the other Apples would say. But, as he would tell her so often, if he was bad, then they both were. If anything, he was just better at hiding his true nature, and Babs knew that all too well.

“Just like the ponies you’re destined to be bound to forever. Just from seeing you at reunions, I know you live by cutie marks.”

Never mind that he’d only weaseled his way into the reunions through marryin' an Apple, Babs would tell herself to calm herself down. That he’d never done anything for them except pretend and pretend ‘til he couldn’t hide anymore. That the way he cared for all of us was an act, too. Especially when it came to me.

“So tell me,” he’d whispered, even as Apple Bloom stood her ground, too determined to say a word, “what does it mean when you look at hers?”

Babs turned her gaze towards her mark and the letter in her hooves, looking back and forth between each one. She told herself it wasn’t jealousy she was feeling when she looked at the griffon in the picture, when she read about how happy she’d made her cousin. She was a growing filly, far too old to worry about small things like that. Especially when everything else in her life was going so well.

She’d finally gotten her mark, so the schoolponies had no reason to bully her anymore. She didn’t have to cry herself to sleep anymore in that orphanage, thinking of reasons why the pony who called himself her uncle had left her after everything they’d been through together. And, speaking of him, at least the one biggest bully in her life was now in a place where he could never touch her, or the Apples, or anypony else. But still, but still…

“Her destiny isn’t you. Or anypony else, for that matter.”

At the time, Babs didn’t believe it, not even a word of it. But looking at the picture and the impossible shield the griffon had on her saddlebag, it was the only explanation. With the way she’d treated them when they first met, they had every right to leave her, and yet she’d expected them to stay.

Just before the law had come for him, he’d told her she was a bad seed who drove other ponies away. It was nothing she’d never heard before. Why should it hurt her this time?

She read the letter again and again, asking herself this question every time. She repeated the routine that had always worked for her. Pretending to be strong calmed her down, at least, even if it wasn’t the truth.

He’d vanished mysteriously as soon as he’d appeared, leaving the two foals inside the orchard to process what had happened. But in her mind, Babs could still see him. And for the moment, that was what mattered.

She looked to her mark one last time before closing her eyes, hoping that all this would be some sort of nightmare. That they could be the four Crusaders again, maybe even five with the griffon tagging along. That they could all walk through Ponyville, helping ponies, showing off their matching marks; that even when Babs left for Manehattan, she could look to her flank and just know they would never be separated.

That, maybe, just maybe, Equestria could be a forgiving world.

“Your cutie mark is a shield, just like your friends.”

Apple Bloom checked her mailbox again and again, even though she knew the results wouldn’t change, that words wouldn’t suddenly appear in it without reason. If Babs hadn’t forgotten about the letter, then there had to be a good reason why she hadn’t responded. Either way, wondering about it any longer was pointless, and it’d only make the other Crusaders more suspicious. As if they weren’t curious enough already.

“Come on, Apple Bloom,” Scootaloo muttered. “There are ponies out there just waiting for help, and the sun’s not getting any brighter just waiting around.” Her wings fluttered in sudden excitement, as they had every chance they got to do their job after Gabby had joined their group.

“I’m comin’, okay,” she responded. “I just thought I’d check up on somethin’ first. Make sure everything’s okay, that’s all.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Sweetie Belle replied, “but how exactly does staring at a mailbox for a half hour qualify as ‘checking up on things’? Especially since that whole mailbox thief story was just a rumor.”

The three fillies trotted away, though Apple Bloom’s heart still wasn’t quite in it. It just didn’t feel right crusading when one of her friends could be in trouble. She shouldn’t be giving herself to other ponies and helping them with their needs when she couldn’t even help Babs with whatever issue was keeping her from sending letters. All she could do was reassure herself that that was what she was meant to do, and that for all she knew, everything else could’ve just been a coincidence.

“Seriously, Sweetie Belle, where did you even hear that mailbox thief story?” Scootaloo asked, trying to lighten the mood. “Why would somepony steal one and risk getting a hoof to their face?”

“Gabby tells me it happens all the time in Griffonstone,” Sweetie Belle answered. “She sent me a letter this week about griffons raiding pony towns and stealing mailboxes. Then she sent me another one saying that wasn’t true and she got carried away.”

She placed a hoof up to Scootaloo’s ear and whispered, “Besides, I’m in on all the rumors, you know.”

Sweetie Belle had been right on one thing—Gabby had been sending them letters basically nonstop since she’d first sought out their help. The Griffonstone branch wasn’t going quite as well as she’d expected, since most griffons didn’t fall for the saddlebag cutie mark trick like she did. But, as always, she’d had plenty to talk about.

So far, they’d had one long-distance Crusader who let out everything about herself and another who’d been too scared to reveal anything even from the start. Maybe having one would make the other shut herself out less, Apple Bloom would have liked to have thought. But, seeing as the other hadn’t responded at all since Gabby came, maybe that was too much to hope for.

“So,” Sweetie Belle piped in, “tell us. Who were you waiting on over there?”

“Was it Tender Taps?” Scootaloo questioned, suspiciously excited about the idea. “Your sis still swears you have a crush on him, you know.”

After hearing this, the white unicorn filly just stared at her friend like she’d just summoned a sinkhole underneath her.

“Why would you know about that? I thought you hated talking about mushy stuff.”

“I still don’t like it,” Scootaloo answered abruptly. “I’m asking for Apple Bloom, not for myself. Because friends put up with friends being mushy and stuff.”

Shaking her head at her friends’ antics, Apple Bloom almost wanted to tell them then and there what had been going on. To be honest, she didn’t really know why she didn’t want to in the first place. If Babs really was having a problem, after all, all three had an equal right to talk it over with her, but somehow, she still hesitated, wondering if she’d really overthought everything.

When the words came, they came without warning just as the earth pony filly cursed herself in the strongest words she knew for falling for such a low trick.

“Tender Taps and I aren’t like that,” she tried to explain as calmly as she could. Instead, judging by how quickly the two Crusaders backed away, it must’ve come out more defensive than she’d thought.

“Sorry,” Apple Bloom whispered after realizing this. “What I was gonna say is that I’m worried about Babs. She hasn’t sent us anythin’ since I told her about Gabby.”

Both of the other Crusaders looked at her with suddenly relieved glances.

“It’s only been a couple weeks, Apple Bloom,” Sweetie Belle answered. “She’s probably busy doing work with her cutie mark, like we are. She wouldn’t just blow you off like that.”

“Yeah, I know,” Apple Bloom replied, “but she doesn’t have a job like we do. It’s harder to get into stylin’ in a city like Manehattan. She could be busy with somethin’ else, but…I’m just really hoping she’s not jealous or anythin’.”

Her eyes sunk at the fear she should’ve had all along, but never thought of until now. She’d spent so long writing off Gabby as a coincidence that she’d never thought about how much having a new long-distance friend could damage everything they’d built.

“Don’t worry so much,” said Scootaloo. “Why would she be jealous, anyway? Gabby’s a Crusader, she’s a Crusader, so what’s the problem?”

Apple Bloom galloped away with the others, hoping that helping other ponies around town would get some of the doubt out of her mind. But even then, all she could do was hope Applejack would arrange things with Babs’ parents so she could come to town soon. Maybe then, she’d know this was all a misunderstanding.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, answering Scootaloo’s question in her head. “I guess that’s the real problem, isn’t it?”

“Just like the ponies you’re destined to be bound to forever. Just from seeing you at reunions, I know you live by cutie marks.”

It wasn’t that Babs had never tried to reach out to the other Crusaders, even as the days went by. Every once in a while, she’d regret her mistake and begin to write, and yet her letters were only a few sets of words written on the page. Feeble attempts to explain what was really going on inside her.

Maybe all the fear she had about them, she realized, was a sign that they were never meant to be. The effortless connection she’d once shared with them was gone, at least for now. Looking to her cutie mark, she drilled herself on the reasons why this had happened for the thousandth time as the train to Ponyville went by on its course.

The Crusaders had seen her with her new cutie mark before and didn’t think anything of it. They’d admired it and told her about their own, never once pointing out the elephant in the room, but they probably still knew deep down. That they would help all of Equestria doing a job the likes of which nopony had seen before, and she’d be stuck clipping manes in her hometown, just like all the other regular ponies with all their regular talents.

She’d never thought about becoming great until she’d met them. Before, she would’ve been happy to sit in the background if it gave her a loving family and if it would get ponies to finally leave her alone. But they’d helped her to see something better in herself, and with the way she was thinking right now, that only twisted the knife more.

Babs got off the train, almost feeling like she was outside her own body and dismissing everything as a dream. Like she’d come to do over the last week, perhaps even longer than that. Just about as soon as she got out, though, the dream faded away.

The Crusaders weren’t there waiting for her like they always had. They didn’t tackle her with hugs at the station or whisper small talk in her ear. Instead, she stood there alone, wind blowing straight through her short mane.

And when she did find them in town, they were back to their jobs, helping ponies with even the smallest of gestures. Spreading light throughout the town in a way she never could. She stood behind a pillar, hoping nopony would notice her, feeling that it would almost better to get the disappointment over with, even if it meant never talking to them as she made her way through town.

Eventually, as they came towards the building, they suddenly noticed her. Sneaking up on her like they always did, it almost seemed like nothing had changed.

The pony who called himself her uncle still had his voice lodged in her head, though, and she backed away.

“The train came already?” Apple Bloom asked. “We didn’t hear anythin’ about that, I swear."

“Yeah,” Sweetie Belle agreed. “We sure weren’t expecting that. Sorry for leaving you alone back there.”

“We didn’t mean to mess up like that,” Scootaloo piped in. “Honest.”

They kept looking at her like that, with their innocent faces, excited to see the pony who had once been their fourth member. Pretending to be kind in the same way he had done. But she knew better now. She wouldn’t let herself get hurt again. Not now, and not ever.

The way they surrounded her, it was almost like the way she’d heard about ponies using the Elements. The way they would gather around a friend gone astray and blast her back into the light. How the corruption would disappear with a single touch, and everything would be back to normal again. How she wished, deep down, that that same shockwave of light would hit her with full force and bring her back with a cutie mark just like theirs.

“What’s wrong?” Apple Bloom asked her after minutes filled with silence. “You’re just as nervous now as the first time ya came here. You haven’t wrote at all.”

“I had other things to do,” Babs answered. “And the last few times I came here didn’t quite turn out so well, so the place still freaks me out.”

“Don’t you know we’ve forgiven you for that?” her cousin spoke. “All that was so long ago, we barely remember a thing.”

Babs’ tail instinctively went to cover up her cutie mark, just like when she had been a blank flank. Circumstances had changed, but the shame was still the same.

“For me, it feels like I turned against you just yesterday," she replied. “And what you’re about to do, I’m okay with it. I may not like it, but I know what’s keeping me from you, and it’s not somethin’ I can change. Me or anypony else, for that matter.”

Apple Bloom took a step forward, approaching her cousin close enough to touch her. It was going to happen any moment, she could feel it.

This was the moment she’d waited for, the moment she grew up. This was just another consequence, one she’d have to face with other ponies eventually. The way she’d had to face it with the pony who called himself her uncle. The way she’d had to face it when none of his relatives stepped up to save her, when she realized she wasn’t good enough for his Oranges.

“That’s just it,” Apple Bloom whispered. “What’s really changed between us?”

You’re a bad seed who drives ponies away. You’ll have to relive this, again and again, until you give up those dreams of belonging. It’d be best if you prepared yourself for disappointment now, when you’re young.

“Was it Gabby?” she asked again. “You think she’s replacin’ you?”

Babs’ tail unwrapped around her cutie mark, revealing it for all to see. She stared straight at it with the sort of scowl one normally reserved for bitter enemies.

“No,” she replied. “It was bound to happen someday. I’ve never fooled myself into thinkin’ I’m any more than a second-tier Crusader. And now this shows up, and yours does too, and the griffon even got hers. But it’s all right. I’ve been told I’m destined to be left behind.”

She blew her bangs away from her eyes, lacking the sort of cool toughness she’d always had when she did. Any shred of pretending was ebbed away by vulnerability, even as she still believed the Crusaders were hiding themselves like she was.

She trotted back towards the train station, hoping she could get back before the pain would hit her any more. She didn’t even want to hear their answers anymore, even if they were fake. Because if they were real, nothing would make sense. If she didn’t have to live in fear of being rejected by others anymore, then how would she live?

Apple Bloom ran towards her twice as fast with a sort of determination Babs had never seen in her cousin before. Everywhere she turned, the other filly followed. And it was then that the thought finally crossed her mind.

Why would she fight for her so much if she was just going to throw her away in the end?

Weighed down with hesitation, Babs finally allowed herself to face the filly she’d been running away from for too long.

“So tell me, what does it mean when you look at hers?”

Apple Bloom had been in the orchard with her that day, when the pony who called himself Babs’ uncle had confronted the two of them. It was easy for her to erase the incident from her mind, because it had never really affected her in the first place.

He’d tried to convince her, but she’d been told to hold on to everything she believed in. The pony Babs knew as her former caretaker had almost always been Mosely Orange, enemy of the Apples, to her. She’d been too young to remember him as anything else, and so just like everypony else in her family, she’d paid his so-called “advice” no mind.

There was no broken pedestal for her when it came to him; the first time she’d really got to know him, it was when she saw the things he put her cousin through. The way he insisted on keeping her under his sway even as he abandoned her to the dark streets of Manehattan. And so, the words he’d said then faded away in her mind, just as they’d been perfectly preserved with Babs’.

He’d messed with her long enough, and even when he was gone, his plans were still in full motion in a way not even he could’ve anticipated. He’d made sure Babs would miss the point all along.

“Letting you go would be disbanding the Crusaders,” she’d told Babs as she trotted off into the distance. “Just ‘cause the three of us started it doesn’t make anypony more important than anypony else.”

Babs looked back to her for a moment, looking almost convinced. That, for the moment, was good enough. Over the next few days, she told herself, she’d make Babs get the point any way she could.

In reality, though, the battle she faced was at a stalemate already. It’d been a day since Babs first came to town, and however convinced she’d been before, she was just as skeptical as before now.

“You have to believe we won’t kick you out like this,” she’d told her as often as she could.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Babs always replied. “Everypony else already has.”

Apple Bloom had always mulled over how to answer after that, knowing that saying the Crusaders were just different wouldn’t hold much weight with Babs. It would never get to the real root of the issue or even change her cutie mark. After a while, she finally realized that simple comforting wouldn’t cut it anymore.

“How’s Babs holding up?” Sweetie Belle wondered as the three met in the clubhouse. As soon as the idea of a secret project had been brought up, Apple Bloom had had to jump through hoops to explain why they were leaving Babs out without triggering her paranoia more.

“She’s gotten a little bit better,” Apple Bloom answered, trying to stay optimistic. “She’s talkin’ to me, for one. She’s got it figured out that I support her as family. But she still doesn’t know about us Crusaders.”

“Who even said only ponies with the mark get to hang out with us?” Scootaloo interrupted. “We help tons of ponies without it. Heck, even Diamond Tiara helps us from time to time. Why would we treat her any different?”

All three fillies saw Babs come through to the clubhouse and rushed to finish their project even more. They kept talking, knowing that she would overhear them and know that they weren’t faking.

“Well, I used to worry about mine,” Apple Bloom confessed, “so I get where she’s comin’ from. I used to think that, since all the Apples had, well, apples, that if I had anythin’ else, they’d shut me out. But really, I spent so much time scared of it that I realized that isn’t how friends or family should work.”

All according to the plan they’d devised only minutes ago, Babs was already at the door to the clubhouse and hesitantly interrupted as soon as she came in.

“You’re not just sayin’ that?” she asked. “You…you were worried about that, too?”

Apple Bloom nodded in response and said nothing else.

“But your cutie mark turned out amazin’. Everypony ‘round town loves you, and you’re already becomin’ some sort of hero. And here I am with my regular one.”

“There’s nothin’ wrong with regular marks, cuz,” Apple Bloom responded. “Twilight says it’s ultra-rare for ponies to get matchin’ marks like we did. Ponies have got along long enough with what ya call ‘regular marks.’ Who would’ve thought a bunch of balloons or butterflies or apples would be destined to save Equestria?”

“And who ever said being second-tier was bad?” Sweetie Belle questioned. “Some ponies would die to be second-tier. Like, in the arcade game I play, first-tier is so out of reach that like only a hundred ponies between here and Canterlot get it, and only a thousand get second-tier. Even if we are first-tier, you still had to grind like crazy to get to where you are now, and beat out thirty thousand other ponies who aren’t Crusaders.”

Scootaloo and Apple Bloom both facehooved at the odd, yet strangely encouraging metaphor, trying and failing to comprehend their fellow Crusader’s logic.

“Yeeeaaah,” Scootaloo muttered, trying to condense Sweetie Belle’s weird speech into something comprehensible, “it’s almost like cutie marks can’t predict the future."

Babs hesitated for a few moments, trying to comprehend everything that was being said, everything that went against what she’d always thought.

“Tune out what he’s sayin’ for a bit and just listen to us,” Apple Bloom said. “Trust us and think about whether we’re really lyin’ or not. Would we really string you along and bring ya over here just to tell you we don’t need ya anymore?”

“I guess you’re right ‘bout that,” Babs finally conceded, “but what about later? When you guys are out fulfillin’ your destinies, and I’m stuck to where I am? When you’re out doin’ great things, will ya still think of me?”

Apple Bloom smiled without a single thought, pulling her cousin into an embrace and sneaking a new pin onto her saddlebag. It’d been made just like Gabby’s, except Rarity had given them permission to use nicer materials this time.

Looking at it, Babs saw that it was the way her cutie mark always should’ve been: the same pair of scissors, now with the unmistakable shield around it. Apple Bloom hadn’t even said a word, but she already had her answer.

“Of course,” Apple Bloom answered. “’Cause you’ll be out there, doin’ those great things with all the rest of us. Next time you worry, just know that there’s nothin’ on Equestria that could keep the five of us from bein’ together.”

Tears suddenly formed all around Babs’ eyes, but the Crusaders knew as soon as they saw them that they weren’t ones of sadness. They were ones of relief, of knowing that there really was a place where she belonged. Of knowing that the pony who called himself her uncle had never been right about her, not even once.

“I’ll put it in words you can understand.”

You will always belong in somepony else’s embrace. You just need to find them.

Author's Notes:

I've been wanting to write something like this for a while, but Gabby's episode just inspired me more. I think the Crusaders should start handing out those little customized shields for everypony who joins; it's a cute calling card idea.

If you're reading If You Give a Little Love, this story is "slightly in the future" from that timeline. So things that happened in S6 haven't happened in that series yet. I also like to think parts of this would work in canon, too.