Sunset licked her lips as she patted her jacket pocket where the pistol rested heavily against her thigh. “Capper is the guy who gave me the gun. When I met him, he was about my age. I’d seen him around because he did street hustles near the blade.”

Applejack tilted her head a little, tickling Sunset’s cheek. “The blade?”

Sunset took a long drag on her cigarette before putting it out in the ashtray with quick jabs. It had burned down to the filter. “Where the prostitutes gather,” she clarified with a somber tone.

Applejack hummed but said nothing else. Sunset heard her draw on her cigarette.

“Capper found me hiding out in a storm drain one day while he was on his way to a corner market. He knew I was one of Verko’s new girls, so he could have walked on by. Maybe even turned me in for a little finder’s fee. Instead, he asked me to help him lift some liquor.

“It was easy. Capper and I ran off with some forties and I followed him back to where a group of boys were waiting. He gave them the bottles and they paid him some cash. He split some of it with me and asked if I wanted to steal something else. We kinda just stuck together after that.”

“Sounds like a nice guy,” Applejack murmured. There was more chatter near their table. A few more people were gathering near the stage in anticipation of the first band.

Sunset laughed a little. “He could be. He was the first kind human I’d met.” Her eyes tensed as she gazed through the floor. “Honestly, he was probably the first person I felt anything resembling affection for. I liked that he was smart and funny, and he was such a good thief and con man. I learned a lot while I was with him.”

She pulled out another cigarette but didn’t hurry to light it. Instead, she caressed it gently as she frowned down at it. “He didn’t have parents either, so we stayed with this woman who dealt weed on the side,” she continued. “Her name was Taffy Melt, but I wasn’t close to her or anything. It was purely a business arrangement. Since I’d gotten better at protecting my money, it was easy to pay her rent. Sometimes, if I was short, she’d let me sell weed for her to earn my way. That’s how I learned the drug game.”

She could hear the frown in Applejack’s concerned voice when she asked, “What about Verko? Didn’t he still have it out for you?”

Sunset sighed. “Yeah, he did. By the time I was living with Taffy Melt, Capper and I had left Badlander territory. We went to the northeastern part of the city. That’s Umbrum turf, but Sombra, their leader, was too busy peddling designer drugs to care that a couple of brats were lifting stuff here and there. We were small fry to him.”

“Then what?”

Sunset ran her hand through her hair. “Well, a year went by. I wasn’t done with the Badlanders, and they weren't done with me either. Gold Fang came close to dragging me back to the whorehouse a few times, and I was afraid Taffy Melt would find out and just backstab me for a reward. I had to get the heat off. I needed to convince Verko that I could do more on the street than on my back.”

Applejack shifted a little like she was trying to settle into a more comfortable position. Her shoulders and neck looked tight. Sunset put her unlit cigarette in her mouth and dared to reach up and rub her friend’s shoulders. They weren’t just tight, they were rock hard. The other girl groaned, her muscles reluctantly giving way to Sunset’s ministrations. Applejack tapped her knee and turned over a hand. “Thanks, but shouldn’t I be doing this for you?”

Sunset pulled back just as someone cheered in the small crowd near them. Someone from the band spoke into the mic. “We’ll be at it, in a few minutes folks…” the man in the blue blazer said. He carried on with some charming banter to warm up the audience, but Sunset tuned him out. Touching Applejack was waaay more interesting.

“This is the first time you’re hearing all of this,” Sunset reasoned with a tiny laugh. “Challenging as this might be for me, I’m more worried about you.”

“Then at least gimme your lighter,” Applejack said, holding her hand out. “Heaven knows your trembling worse than Jell-O in an earthquake! I’ll light you up again.” Her voice was still languid.

“I’m not shaking that bad…” Sunset returned with a pout, but she stopped her mini-massage to do as her friend asked.

Okay, so maybe her hands were shaking still. It was kind of hard to have nerves of steel when relating the worst moments of your past, after all.

With the new cigarette lit, the two settled back into their cheek-to-cheek conversation.

“So you were telling me you needed to get Verko off your back,” Applejack stated after ashing her cig. “What did you end up doing? Something musta worked cuz he stopped chasin’ after ya.”

Sunset nodded. “Yep. There was an electronics store that had all kinds of stuff. TVs, video game consoles, you name it. They had a decent lock on the back door along with a security system, but Capper picked the lock, and I managed to steal the code to disable the system. When we got inside, we took all the recording devices off the walls and even the computer the surveillance footage was stored on. It was like Christmas. We took just about everything we could carry into the van.”

“Man, that musta been one heckuva haul!” Applejack exclaimed, pulling back just enough to spare her friend a wide-eyed look of awe. “And you were how old when you did this?”

Sunset felt her cheeks burn as she tugged at her ear and squinted one eye. “Umm… Thirteen? I think?”

Applejack let out a harsh exhale, an incredulous smile on her lips. Sunset winced and held up her hands. What else was there to say? She was nothing if not adaptable, and life on the streets was just another thing she’d been determined to excel quickly at.

She knew, biologically, she was close in age to the others. However, as time went on, Princess Twilight observed that staying in human form for so long had also affected Sunset’s mind to reflect this. It had been a tough pill to swallow. She’d still considered herself at least six years older than the others. Tallying up her life on paper, this was factually true, it just wasn’t reflected psychologically anymore.

But back then? Being of an older mind had certainly helped her execute plans most young teens couldn’t fathom perpetrating. It wasn’t until Princess Twilight had appeared to stop her that she realized she’d regressed mentally. Why else did she care whether or not she was the “princess” of the Fall Formal? That part certainly hadn’t been necessary for her world domination plan, that was just her being a bitchy type-A teen. Maybe if she’d accounted for the inter-dimensional cognitive dissonance, she would have accelerated her evil aims.

Thank Celestia she hadn’t.

It was something of a touchy subject for Sunset, and not one she was keen on diving into. How much of her was still pony? How much of her was human? Princess Twilight had expressed concern a couple of years ago about this very thing. Her remedy was to play a game of tag. The exercise had… certainly been interesting. If anything it made Sunset more open to Pinkie’s unique brand of fun, a gift she couldn’t be more grateful for.

“Sorry, I interrupted,” Applejack said as they returned to speaking into each other’s ears. “I don’t mind chatting here, but if you wanna move, we can.” She said this because the opening band had begun to perform. The noise in the pub was even greater than before. The music pouring out of the speakers was some danceable blues-rock. Too bad Sunset hadn’t finished relating her past yet. She half considered asking for a break just to go watch the performance, but she could tell her friend needed some kind of resolution, and quite frankly, Sunset just wanted to get this over with.

“Let’s smoke outside, I’ll tell you the rest,” Sunset said loudly with a look of resignation. They’d lose the table, but it couldn’t be helped. They would have given it up anyway when Red Rooster showed up.

The pair stood from their seats and weaved their way through the dense crowd till they were outside on the sidewalk again. The dramatic shift in noise was a little disorienting, and Sunset tried vainly to rub the sudden ringing out of her ears. Applejack threw her cig out into the street, took out another, and lit it with her own lighter. Sunset drew her leather jacket tighter around her body and watched as a car passed by, the headlights washing over them in a glaring wave of light before vanishing. Overhead it was still dark as new cloud cover concealed the moon so totally that not even the slivers of moonlight reached down anymore. The streetlights were yellow and warm, but they lit the surroundings in stark beams that didn’t travel far from their immediate location.

Applejack and Sunset moved away from the main doors. There were a few other patrons on the street as well, so they tried to get to a good spot out of earshot. They stopped outside of a dark hardware store.

Sunset took a deep breath before resuming her story: “Right. So we stole all that electronic stuff. Afterwards, we drove straight into the Badlands, so to speak. We went to Verko’s base and just gave him the keys to the van. ‘Here you go! I told you I’m better at stealing,’ and then I just crossed my fingers.” She was relieved they didn’t have to shout anymore, but she lamented losing such a good excuse to get into Applejack’s personal space. “I didn’t know if he was just going to take everything we’d stolen and stick me back into the whorehouse anyway out of spite. I was pretty nervous!”

“What’d he say?” Applejack asked, her brow tight and her free hand shoved into her front pocket. She didn’t appear in the least bit affected by the cold.

Sunset grinned. “Verko was actually impressed with our haul. We’d brought him nearly twenty G’s worth of merchandise.”

“Wow!” Applejack’s mouth fell open and she covered it, chuckling all the while. “Wow! You really made off, there!”

Sunset ducked her head, a little embarrassed by the praise of her theft, but she was also surprised by how good it felt. She was even more taken aback by the fact that Applejack was praising her at all. Surely she didn’t approve of stealing things. Was she just impressed with Sunset’s audacity? “Yeah, we did pretty good for a couple of kids,” Sunset mumbled, scratching self-consciously at her cheek.

“Verko was happy with this, then? What were you gonna do, steal crap for ‘em?” Applejack flicked her cigarette as she said this, an ember fluttering brightly as it descended for a moment before vanishing from sight.

Sunset shrugged as she pulled on her cigarette. “Basically. We’d give him a cut of whatever scams we pulled. I did that up until I convinced Capper to help me get into Canterlot High by forging some papers and an ID. By then I’d saved enough to get my studio apartment, but I didn’t tell Capper. After I got accepted into the school, I just left him in the middle of the night and didn’t tell him where I went.”

Applejack’s face bunched, the first time she’d let some sign of disapproval pass her features. She pursed her lips and turned her face away like she’d realized too late what she’d done. A second later she looked back at Sunset with a more neutral expression.

“You don’t have to fake it, you know,” Sunset said with a wry smirk. Applejack flinched with a guilty look.

“Sorry,” her friend mumbled. “I just feel bad for the guy. He sounded like a nice feller.”

“He was. What I did was totally crappy. Capper had done a lot for me, and I just left him without a word. I basically had no concept of gratitude.” There was more to that part of the story, but of all the memories she had, even the ones about Celestia, these were the hardest to relate. She felt a little guilty for circumventing the bigger details. Just for now, she told herself as she took another puff on her cigarette.

Sunset bunched her brow. “I made a deal with Verko. In exchange for letting me go to school, I agreed to sell drugs for him on campus. I’d get a small cut and he’d get access to a whole new market.”

“I had no idea,” Applejack said smokily, her eyes widening. “I knew you were up to no good. But selling drugs?? What in tarnation did you even sell?”

“Weed. And you not knowing was part of the point. Almost no one but my ‘customers’ knew. I think Vice-Principal Luna suspected me of it, but I was always one step ahead of her.”

“So the rest is pretty much history, huh,” Applejack murmured, gazing at Sunset like she was too fascinating for words.

Sunset shuffled her feet, feeling her heart race a little under the attention. She turned her eyes back to the pub entrance when she heard a bunch of laughter. Some girls had stumbled out, and they were being escorted by a bouncer. Maybe they’d had too much to drink.

She looked back at Applejack, a sheepish look on her face. If only her story could be done here. “Not quite finished, AJ, sorry.”

“No need to apologize, sugarcube,” her friend chuckled. “What else is there? Seems you covered quite a bit.”

“Well, after you guys cleansed me with the magic of Harmony, I knew I couldn’t steal or deal drugs anymore to pay rent. But I couldn’t get a normal job because Verko was so insistent on me working for him.” Sunset rolled her eyes and wheeled her hands through the air. “I went back to Verko with a new proposition. I’d secure Equestrian gold for him to pay myself free of any lingering obligations. I could do this now thanks to Princess Twilight altering the spell I’d made to allow interdimensional travel whenever someone wanted. This let me do perfectly legal Equestrian side jobs and bring back the loot to Verko.

“So that suspicious gold I kept bringing back?” She acted like she was scrubbing something from her pants to emphasize her next point. “He would launder it for me, for a large fee. That's how I supported myself post-rainbow beam. The arrangement was only supposed to last until I graduated, then I was going to be out for good. Free to live a clean life fully above board.”

Applejack frowned and stepped closer. “So what happened?”

Sunset’s eyes filled with sudden tears and she drew anxiously on her cigarette. She hated this part. “Capper. I hurt him when I left the way I did. He was frustrated. Desperate. He’d always felt overlooked, and for this reason, he'd wanted to get free of the Badlanders. Verko, being the jerk that he was, never gave him a serious chance. Capper was fed up with it, so he went over all of our heads. He told Grogar, the head of the Trog-El syndicate, that I was bringing Verko tons of gold. In exchange for the tip, he wanted a spot somewhere else in Grogar’s criminal organization.”

Applejack shook her head a little, raising her cigarette to her face but pausing just short of putting it into her mouth. “Damn! By your own friend…”

“He wasn’t really my friend back then. He was a useful tool whose company I sometimes enjoyed,” Sunset corrected flatly. She flicked her cigarette harder than necessary. “So Grogar told Verko that my services were better suited to his agendas, and since Grogar runs the syndicate, Verko had no choice but to let him take me. Capper ended up being stuck with the Badlanders still but with a catch. Grogar strongly suggested that Verko promote Capper to make up for losing me. He made it sound like a suggestion, but he did a good job arguing his case with the other gang leaders. With their support, Verko had to go along with it.”

Sunset sneered. “Grogar didn’t do it to be nice to Capper, either. He did it because if Capper ever got a guilty conscience, he could turn around and tell Verko exactly who had betrayed him. It keeps Capper in a place of danger. But it's not without its uses. If Grogar ever had a mind to, he could pressure Capper into being his agent within the Badlanders.” She made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “From the start people have been using him as a pawn. Me included.”

“This Grogar sounds like a nasty piece of work,” Applejack said with a dark look. “I know he’s the head of this ‘syndicate’ or whatever, but how can he go meddling in other gangs’ affairs?”

Sunset mirrored her dark look. “Raw power. The kind of power I aspired to before I was freed from my hatred. Grogar is not to be trifled with. All the others–the Changelings, the Badlanders, the Umbrums, and the Storm Kings–they may vary in size amongst themselves, but compared to the Trog-Els, they may as well be ants. Suffice to say, there's a reason the syndicate is named after Grogar’s mob.”

Applejack’s mouth screwed to the side. “Better to see the other gangs as paid servants to Grogar.”

Sunset bobbed her head from side to side. “There’s definitely some parallels, sure. But even Grogar knows that if they all united together, they’d cause him enough trouble to be highly unprofitable. So there's your shaky balance to the screwed-up criminal ecosystem of Canterlot City. Big scary international mob at the top, several tough scrappy gangs on the bottom.”

“So this side deal you discovered Gold Fang doing…?” Applejack began to pace slowly, her cowboy boots clicking soundly on the sidewalk.

Sunset tracked her carefully as she spoke, “It’s with the Changelings, probably Grogar’s biggest threat within the syndicate. In all likelihood, he’s already aware of the deal and is just getting his pieces into place to take advantage.” Her mouth set in a grim line. A car alarm went off somewhere nearby, only to quickly be disarmed with a series of rapid beeps. “He wants bad blood between the Badlanders and the Changelings. The same way he wants bad blood between the Storm Kings and the Umbrums.”

“Because then he holds all the power,” Applejack mumbled around her cigarette filter as she eyed Sunset sideways. She caught on quickly.

“And Capper is still with the Badlanders,” Sunset resumed with a slow nod. “He’s Gold Fang’s backup, even! I’m worried he’ll get burned in all of this.” She pressed a hand to her forehead at the thought, her eyes gazing down at the sidewalk. “Capper is meant to be Gold Fang’s shadow, never leaving his side. It’d be easy to point the finger at him, too.”

Applejack frowned as she stopped her pacing to drop her cigarette and step on it. “How’d he get the gun out to you, then? Wouldn’t he have been missed?”

Sunset nodded tightly as she did the same. She considered pulling out another cigarette, but she didn’t want to go through her pack too fast. Her particular brand of cigs was on the pricey side. It was just another good reason to quit. Pretty soon she wouldn’t be able to afford the habit. “Yes,” she said to AJ. “That’s why it was such a huge thing that he did that. He could get into serious trouble going against Gold Fang.”

“Sounds like he still cares about you,” Applejack said quietly. Her words were almost lost as another car passed down the street.

“Yeah,” Sunset murmured reluctantly. It wasn’t so much that she still doubted this. The pistol he’d given her rested too heavily in her pocket for her to continue denying the truth. It was more the sudden sense of responsibility she felt toward him. After years apart, Capper had seemed like a distant part of her past. Now he was just… there again. Needing her like she needed him.

Life was so weird that way.

“I just wish he’d see that he could be so much more than just a mob thug,” Sunset lamented to Applejack. She crossed her arms and gazed down the street. Not all of the businesses were closed. There was a laundromat open just a few doors down. Across the street, much further away, a Chinese restaurant was still serving customers too.

Applejack drew near and rubbed her arm. Her hand lingered. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink,” she said gently.

Sunset sighed roughly, putting her hand over hers. “That’s pretty much the problem, isn’t it? Fluttershy was encouraging me the other day to–” she broke off, her eyes going wide at the almost immediate shift that occurred in her friend. Applejack’s hand drew away from Sunset’s arm as she straightened up tall and rigid. Sunset winced, her chin tucking. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring her up.”

The cowgirl shifted one shoulder up in a stiff, half-hearted shrug. “Tain’t no problem. What’d she say? Give Capper a chance?”

Sunset rubbed her arm where her friend had touched her. If only she could rewind time. “I didn’t tell her anything specific about him, but… yes. Pretty much that.”

Applejack scoffed, but it lacked any true disdain. She smirked as she crossed her arms and gazed back in the direction of the pub. “Sounds like Shy.”

“Mmm hmm…”

The silence stretched on, but it wasn’t like the other times when they just existed peaceably together. Sunset could feel a rift forming. She pressed the heel of her palm into her forehead hard. Idiot! She scolded herself. You bring AJ out to forget about her problems, then you go and bring up the girl she’s broken up over?

At a loss as to what else to say, Sunset jerked her head toward the pub. “Come on, AJ. Let’s go listen to the opening band.” She turned and started back for the pub, resisting the urge to hang her head. If she was going to lift her friend’s spirits, she couldn’t start acting all depressed. Even if she did feel like a massive heel.

Maybe this had been a mistake…

“Now, hold on,” Applejack said placing a light hand on Sunset’s elbow. Sunset turned to look at her, blinking. Her blonde friend was still smirking, but her face looked more relaxed. “I know we came here to listen to some blues tonight, but the thing is, your story was missing something real important!”

Sunset turned a quarter and held her hands up helplessly. “Like what?”

Applejack squinted one eye and pointed at her. “Them times you got shot, remember? You never said, and if I recall rightly, you promised an explanation!”

They stared at each other for a solid thirty seconds before Sunset snickered suddenly and let her head drop to her chest. She put her hands on her hips and looked back up to grin at her friend, “Oh! That! Umm…” She tugged at her ear and said with a small wince. “I’d half hoped you’d forget.”

Applejack shook her head as she tapped her temple. “I got a mind like a steel trap, Sun!” Her eyes tensed. “Though, if you ain’t up to it, I’d understand. You’ve told me a lot of heavy things.”

Sunset bit the corner of her lip as she considered what she would do. To share, or not to share? She’d never divulged this much to anyone before. Did she really want this entire night to be about her and her screwed-up past? But Applejack seemed really interested, and she had seemed pretty worried after their visit to Forest Tender…

She sighed. What was kicking out a few more skeletons from the closet? She had plenty to spare, after all.

“So,” Sunset started nervously, scratching at her cheek. “Uh, the time I got grazed was from getting caught shoplifting from this Mexican corner store.” Sunset grinned sheepishly and pushed her index fingers together, a blush burning across her face. “The guy at the register… Well, he was in his eighties and he fell asleep all the time behind the counter.”

“Ah. An easy mark,” Applejack said with a terse chuckle and a small shake of her head.

Sunset pinched her tongue between her teeth and wagged a finger. “You have noooo idea!” Her eyes widened and she put her balled fists on her hips, a determined scowl hardening her features. “I kept saying, ‘One of these days, old man!’”

Applejack grinned, clearly amused by the lighter note of this story. “And lemme guess. That day finally came?”

“Sure did!” Sunset said with a little giggle. She pretended to bob dramatically with upheld hands, marching in place like she was actually tip-toeing somewhere. “I snuck back there,” she fake-whispered, “grabbed the register key off him and just… popped open the machine!” Sunset straightened up and scratched the back of her head, her sheepish grin returning. “I stole three-hundred and seventeen bucks on the nose. I would have gotten off clean if someone hadn’t entered the store just then and made the doorbell ring.”

She popped up straight, her eyes comically wide. “The store owner woke up, saw me, and lost it. He grabbed a pistol from under the counter and started shooting at me!”

Sunset mimed being an old man firing off shots, toothless and squinting. Applejack chortled at her antics.

“I can hardly believe he’d just haul off and shoot at ya like that! This was before Canterlot High, right?” Applejack asked with squinted eyes. “You were still a lil’ kid!”

Sunset bobbed her head. “Yup! Who knows what led him to do that? I was just glad he had bad eyesight!" She pointed a finger gun out into the street, miming a pistol being fired. "Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! After missing five shots from his six-shooter, he finally knicks me on the ribs with his last bullet on the way out the door." Sunset pointed at where there was a faint line on her right side. "I’ve never gone back to that neighborhood since. Too scared! Pinkie tried to get me to pick up a piñata from that same store a few years later for a quinceañera she was putting on, but I made up some excuse and just made her one after school with Twilight’s help.”

Applejack shook her head slowly at her, one eyebrow arching. “Sounds like you were lucky!”

“Yeah, I totally was…” Sunset bit her lip and looked at her friend nervously. “Just so you know, I don’t feel proud of these moments or anything. Including the electronics store heist.” She sighed heavily. “Thanks to being a criminal, I’d actually saved up an obscene amount of money. A lot of that I just paid back to the people I’d hurt.”

“Before paying off your own debts?” Applejack asked, her mouth dropping. “Sugarcube, no offense, but that sounds like you put the cart before the horse!”

Sunset planted a hand on her face and shifted her weight to one foot. “You’re telling me! I mean, I’m glad I was able to return much of what I stole, but I wasn’t able to get all of it, and now that I’m buried under debt, I dunno when I’m going to get to the rest of it!” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Then Twilight and Celestia told me they wanted a better understanding of what magic was doing to this world, which was obviously obligatory since it was my fault it came here to begin with. That kinda necessitated me pouring all my free time into that and getting a higher education–”

Applejack let her head tilt back as a look of painful understanding came over her face. “And if you’re going to school full-time, you can’t get a decent job working full-time–”

Sunset twirled a hand through the air. “Ergo, I’m basically doomed to be broke for the rest of my pony-human life.”

“Wow,” Applejack said, scratching at her hairline just under her hat. “That’s… a lot, Sunset.”

“No kidding!” Sunset laced her hands behind her back and stubbed a boot into the sidewalk. “But no matter how hard it gets, I always have to remember that…” Here she faltered.

Applejack cocked her head to the side, her eyes tensing. “Hmm? What’s up, Sun?”

Sunset sighed. When she thought she’d hold off on this story, she thought that meant, like… next week, or something. Heck, next decade, even.

But if Applejack was going to understand why Sunset had made the financial choices she did, she needed to know this one.

She needed to.

“I owe a blood debt,” Sunset said quietly, her eyes fastening onto Applejack’s. “From that time I really got shot.”

Applejack’s expression sobered. She tilted her hat back and then hooked her thumbs into her front pockets. “What all went down, then?” she asked softly.

Sunset quieted as a man and woman, arm in arm, passed them on the street. There were fewer people outside of the pub now that the first band’s performance was well underway. If Sunset remembered the showbill correctly, they’d be playing for at least another thirty minutes before Red Rooster’s two-hour set. The music sounded too indistinct from where they stood, but she could tell it sounded like a good time.

If only the night could have been just pure fun. But if she was intent on getting intimate with her friend, then she owed it to her to spill about who she really was. Who she had been.

She looked back at Applejack, her boots tapping anxiously on the sidewalk. “I wasn’t the target that time, but the bullet went through the meat of my arm.” She lifted her left arm and pointed at her tricep. There, a small round scar was visible. It was only slightly lighter than the surrounding brown skin, but the skin tissue there had the faintest ripple to it, a result of the bullet ripping through her so cleanly.

Applejack leaned in to peer at the scar but shook her head in the darkness. Without a word, she gestured for Sunset to follow her to a streetlight, and the other girl did so. There, Sunset lifted her arm again, and Applejack got in close to see. She squinted her eyes and ran her fingertips over the spot once, making Sunset’s flesh break out in gooseflesh. Satisfied, she stepped back.

“So who was the target?” the cowgirl asked.

“Taffy Melt,” Sunset said, her brow tightening. “The weed dealer Capper and I had been living with before I went to Canterlot High. She’d gotten into a feud with some other drug dealer in the area, and one day while we were helping her bring groceries into the house, some guys in masks did a drive-by.” Sunset’s eyes stared down the alley they now stood across from. She saw a stray dog rifling through some spilled garbage near a dumpster. Enough of the streetlight flooded down the narrow passage to highlight the open cans, crumpled cereal boxes, and used tissues the dog had dug past. Her eyes lingered on a dented milk jug. “It was… so loud. Everything happened so fast. It was crazy–” Her breath hitched. Sunset turned her face away and took a deep breath.

The effects of the weed and the alcohol had long since washed away in the stress of relating her misdeeds. She knew it was selfish to want to numb herself for this part. If anything she’d talk about tonight needed a clear head, it was this story.

Keep it together.

She looked at Applejack again, and when she spoke, her voice was more neutral. “All the windows of the house got blown out. She died right there on the driveway. She…didn’t have a face anymore. It was just blood and teeth and–” she closed her eyes and swallowed hard, trying to keep the lump from rising in her throat, “and viscera. Taffy had been carrying milk, so when she fell, the jug hit the concrete and burst open. I just… I remember seeing red swirling in the white as it spread down to the street.”

It had made such a pretty shade of pink, with bright red swirls cutting through before it thinned out over the pale concrete.

“Damn…” Applejack breathed, her eyes going round as her expression fell.

Sunset shook her head, a bitter look coming over her features. “That’s why I hate to think of it. I only got hit in the arm, and Taffy lost her face…” She broke off again, feeling herself lose the fight to keep her throat open. Sniffling back tears, she wiped delicately at her eyes. She was losing her grip again. “Sorry,” she mumbled thickly. Then she said it louder. “Sorry. It’s weird crying about it now. At the time I just saw it as an inconvenience.”

Sunset bared her teeth and shrugged. “Capper and I just gathered all of our things and ran before the cops showed up. But Taffy, she’d just had a baby, y’know? It was a girl. Gumdrop Glitter. She… She was in the house. Alive.” Sunset’s chin crumpled and she tried to smile, but she found she couldn’t. “The baby was still in the house and she was alive, Applejack.” A sob got away from her. She turned her head, ashamed.

She could still remember how eerily quiet the house had been. Such a suburban home any other time, yet on that terrible day it had been riddled with bullet holes. The air had been sharp with the smell of gunpowder. Her ears had still rung from the rattling hail of bullets that had been sent their way. The living room television played music videos on low volume. Sunset could still recall the warm blood dripping down her arm, dampening her sleeve. It just stung at the time, but the pain still drove her. She’d known the agony would set in soon when the adrenaline wore off. She’d stumbled to get her things from her bedroom. Just across the hall, Taffy’s baby had finally begun to cry. Sunset hadn't even stopped to look.

She felt Applejack pull her into a hug, ripping her out of the memory. Sunset stared wide-eyed over her friend’s shoulder, tears streaming from her face. The cowgirl squeezed her hard, but not enough to hurt. Just enough to make Sunset feel like she was going to absorb her into her body. She wished feverishly that she could be. How wonderful would it be to be held by her friend like this all of the time? Safe and protected?

Sunset buried her face in Applejack’s shoulder and let her arms wrap around the other girl’s strong torso. They stayed like that, just swaying under the light. Sunset hiccuped as she tried to reign in her tears. Applejack just held her, one hand rubbing her between the shoulders.

Two cars drove by. Applause swelled from the pub as the opening band completed a song.

Feeling her emotions subside enough to speak (and what was she feeling anyway? Grief? Self-pity? Better to put the dramatics away, regardless) Sunset sniffled back snot and spoke with a ragged voice. “Capper actually had a heart. He made sure to leave Gumdrop with the neighbors first. It took him a while to get someone to answer the door, but he just tried and tried. Me? I would have just… I would have just left her there.”

Sunset felt Applejack give her a tiny squeeze.

“I actually got annoyed with him,” she made herself say next. “Can you believe it? I was annoyed because he stopped long enough to make sure the baby was safe.” Sunset shook her head, her eyes falling shut, more fat tears leaking out as she did so. “I was horrible! I didn’t care that Gumdrop was an orphan, I just cared about not getting caught!”

“You aren’t like that anymore, sugarcube,” Applejack whispered, patting her back. “You hear me? That wasn’t you. Heck, I don’t think it ever was. The magic of friendship can’t make someone good. Deep down, they have to want to be good. That’s where the real you was at, all right? And you’ve been working hard to make it up ever since. It’s a two-way street, darlin’.”

Sunset buried her face in Applejack’s shoulder. Could she really believe that? Could she ever possibly make amends?

Distantly, she could hear the pub singing along with the band’s lead singer. Thanks to the huge chorus of voices, she could just make out what the lyrics were.

“Oh, can it be?
The voices calling me
They get lost and out of time
I should've seen it glow
But everybody knows
That a broken heart is blind
That a broken heart is blind”

“So now you know,” Sunset said with a humorless laugh. She did jazz hands, even though her friend couldn’t see this. “Surprise! A blood debt! Hurray!” She quieted and pulled out of her friend’s hug, wiping at her face. “Ugh, sorry. That was terrible.”

Applejack shook her head, her eyes squinted with compassion. “I ain’t offended, hon. Shoot, I’d be throwin’ around jokes too just to keep my head above the water. Us Apples prefer a laugh to a sour mood, no matter the circumstances, remember?”

Sunset chuckled, and her voice sounded phlegmy. “That’s right!” She sighed, tugging once again on her ear. “Can I become an Apple? My family sucks in comparison.”

Applejack smirked. “Far as I’m concerned you and all our friends are honorary family members, so it ain’t even a question, Sunset.”

Sunset chanced a broad smile, though it trembled under the weight of her emotions. “Cool.” She coughed, trying to clear her throat, and tucked a curly lock of hair behind her ear. “Anyway… I’ve since sent some money to Gumdrop. Anonymous, of course. But it’s been a while. She’d be six or seven now. I think she’s staying with her aunt.” Sunset pointed limply at her face, exhaustion plain on her features. “Soooo… broke. All the time. Must be. Blah. Sorry, I can’t do words right now. I’m done. Finally. For realsies this time.”

“That’s real noble of you,” Applejack murmured, shoving her hands into her front pockets. “Sending money like that, even when you got your own problems.”

“Not noble. Just doing what I have to,” Sunset said, looking down at the sidewalk.

“Just playing devil’s advocate a bit here, Sunset, but… y’know it wasn’t your fault that Gumdrop lost her mama, right?” Applejack said tentatively.

Sunset waved her hands in front of her, turning away. “That doesn’t matter. I didn’t do right by her. I owe her a better start than what I would have given her had it been up to me– motherless and left for dead.” Her words were sharp. She wouldn’t be convinced differently. This was just something she had to do.

“Right… Okay. You’re right, it ain’t my business, Sunset. You do what you gotta do.”

A moment of silence. Then…

Applejack thumbed toward her truck, an awkward grimace on her face, “Ya wanna smoke some more?”

Sunset looked up at her, frowning in confusion. Smoke? But they could do that here, why would–? Then it finally clicked.

“Oh my gosh, yes!” Sunset giggled, already starting to head that way.

Applejack chuckled in kind as she followed, a relieved look on her face. “Phew! Good. Cuz I need it too after all that. No offense, Sunset, but I don’t envy your journey.”

“Ugh,” Sunset groaned loudly up to the sky. “Believe me, I know!”

A few minutes later they were sitting in Applejack’s truck again. The spot they were in was parked across from an empty lot. She leaned on the passenger door and blinked slowly at it. There wasn’t much interesting to see. Just some scattered garbage, patches of dirt, and small scrubby plants.

Sunset took a moment to check her phone. She had missed a few calls and texts from Twilight, Pinkie, and Rainbow respectively.

>TS: Against my better judgment, I have found myself dressed to the nines and bar hopping. On a Wednesday night. PLEASE help. It’s me, Pinkie, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow, and Sassaflash. No one’s started crying yet, but I give it 30 minutes tops with how rowdy the girls are being. Did I mention I need help? I’m trying to hold out in case we need an adult in the room, but at this rate, I’M going to start drinking.

>PP: U! I WANNA TAKE U 2 A GAY BAR! (No srsly, its grls nite out and I think that might b our nxt stop) Call me bak or u smelly!

>RD: Dude, where the heck r u? We been texting & calling! Stop being lame. Come out with us!

Sunset shook her head as she responded to each of them with a variation of, “Sorry, can’t.” To Twilight, however, she asked with a bitten lip:

>SSh: What part of town u guys in? Need a cardinal direction. Just 4 peace of mind

Twilight must have been staring at her phone because the answer came fairly quickly:

>TS: NE. Suburbs, near Sassaflash’s home. There’s a small cluster of pubs and bars we’re trolling between. Are you SURE you won’t come?

Sunset laughed a little at her friend’s choice of words. They were in Umbrum territory, then. Well… She supposed it ought to be fine so long as they didn’t hop over to an illegal rave or something. Sombra and his minions used underground events to peddle their party drugs.

>SSh: Sorry, no. Other plans. Plz stick together. Be safe, be smart, but try and hav fun!

>TS: I think I’ll need that drink after all :(

Sunset laughed as she put her phone away in her leather jacket’s inner pocket.

Applejack looked at her with a crooked grin. “What’s got ya tickled?”

“It seems we aren’t the only ones who thought to go out tonight!” Sunset said with a little sigh. “The girls are bar hopping.”

“Now that,” Applejack said with a little wince, “I ain’t sorry to miss.”

Sunset snickered. “I know! Same. I feel kinda bad, Twi really wanted me to go with.”

“Shoot, I wager that bookworm could use with a little mischief. She needs to relax.” She placed the glass pipe in her mouth and struck up the lighter, the orange glow from the flame lighting up her freckled face.

Sunset lifted an eyebrow. “Says the two super stressed out girls getting high in a truck.”

Her friend shrugged as she passed the pipe. She held her breath for a few seconds before saying with a slow exhale, “Well I sure ain’t going to relax with a bunch of drunk teenage girls pulling me in six different directions.”

Sunset grinned and pointed two fingers at her head. “Nope! You just got me!”

Applejack winked at her. “You’re all I need, sugarcube.”

This made Sunset blush and fidget as she lifted the pipe for a hit. She really loved it when AJ turned on the southern charm.

“So hey… Does anyone else know about all the stuff you told me?” Applejack asked.

Sunset took a moment to light up and inhale before answering.“I alluded to some of it with Twilight,” Sunset rasped, her voice tight with held breath. She exhaled gradually, smoke billowing into the truck cab in thick swirls. She cracked her window, lest they get fogged in. “Since she’s so smart, she guessed that I used to be a child prostitute and a weed dealer at Canterlot High, but she’s not aware of anything else. So far, you’re the only one who knows as much as you do.” She glanced cheekily at Applejack. “Don’t you feel special?”

“I’m honored that you trust me as much as you do,” Applejack said with a charming grin as she took the pipe back from her. “And I just wanna point out that I never thought less of you at any point in time. In fact, all your story did is make me feel even more impressed with you!”

Sunset’s eyebrows rose, her eyes lidded. “Impressed?”

Applejack nodded unsteadily, her hat shifting out of place on her head before she corrected it with a sheepish laugh.

Sunset pressed a finger into her temple, her eyes narrowed. “Spell it out for me. How does that work? I basically gave you the highly sanitized Cliff Notes for Push.”

“Push? No, heck no. Maybe… Maybe Trainspotting mixed with a little Girl, Interrupted? But with less heroin and more magical ponies,” Applejack returned with a scrunched nose.

Sunset blinked slowly, her eyebrows rising the highest they could go. “Wait, are we… Are we talking about the movies or the books?” She was surprised her friend was dropping the titles either way. She hadn’t pegged Applejack as much of an avid movie watcher or book reader. She supposed having Apple Bloom as president of the Canterlot Movie Club might have something to do with that, but still.

Applejack looked at her with a vacant expression on her face. She looked out her driver-side window like she’d just heard something. After a short moment, she looked back at Sunset and frowned. “Beg yer pardon, but… uh… What were we talking about again?”

Sunset laughed from deep in her chest. “You’re so high!”

Applejack grinned goofily, “I, er…” After exactly three blinks, she held up her hands instead of a full response. That only made Sunset laugh harder.

Sunset carried on for a while, her knees drawing up as she tried to make the laughter stop. Applejack eventually joined her. When their humor died down they sat in companionable silence for a minute.

How nice that they could get back to this after that silly little hiccup. Sunset really had to be careful not to bring up you-know-who or she’d bork her plans.

She snickered. Heh heh… bork.

“What’s got you giggling again?” Applejack asked, looking at her with a sleepy expression.

Sunset waved the question away. “Nothing. Sorry.” She blinked drowsily at her friend. “So you’re really all right, then? After hearing all of that? I was worried I’d overload you.”

Applejack pushed her lower lip out and shook her head. “Nah.” She scoffed a little, looking at the pipe in her hand. “I know you must think me and my family are about as wholesome as apple pie but… fact is, we got skeletons in our closet too.”

Sunset frowned. “You guys? Really?” She felt a little bad for sounding so skeptical. It was just such a strange thought. Apart from losing their parents at a young age, the Apples appeared to have an ideal upbringing, their recent troubles notwithstanding.

The cowgirl smirked at her. “Eyup. Really.” She sighed and took a moment to take a quick hit of the pipe. “I don’t mind sharing. Seems only fair after all you told me. But you okay with missing the first act? This might take a minute,” Applejack stated with a tensed brow.

Sunset shrugged. “I’m sure the band is great, but I’d rather just talk to you. We can go in when Red Rooster is on stage.” She reached over and slapped lightly at Applejack’s shoulder. “You should probably quit after that one. If you take too many hits you’ll get too high.”

Applejack exhaled quickly, having learned her lesson from before. “All righty.” She passed the pipe.

Sunset took it and took one more hit. This was her last, too. She exhaled slowly, enjoying the way the silvery smoke looked in the scattered light. The moon had re-emerged from the clouds, and now the street lit up with its soft glow. The stretch of road they were parked on was still darker than by the pub, but at least Sunset could marvel at the chaotic swirls of weed smoke that drifted away from her.

Looking over at her friend, she said, “You don’t have to tell me anything just because I told you about my past. I lost a bet, remember? I was just ponying up.” Sunset snickered again. Heh, pony.

Applejack chuckled too. “Well, that may be the case, but you really poured your heart out. And…” she sighed again before taking the pipe and setting it on the narrow dashboard. “Sunset, I know you. Even without saying a word, you were beating yourself up about the past. Now that you’ve said as much as you have, once the weed wears off, you’ll go crawling up the walls thinking you ain’t good enough to be keepin’ my company.” She arched an eyebrow as she looked shrewdly at her friend. “Sugarcube, us Apples ain’t country royalty. We’re rednecks, and we know it.”

Sunset scowled. “Applejack, you guys aren’t–”

“Hold on,” Applejack said, holding a hand up with her eyes closed. “Jes’ hold your horses, Sunset.”

“Heh, horses,” Sunset giggled thickly.

Applejack rolled her eyes, but a crooked grin unfurled across her lips. “Looks like I wasn’t the one who hit the pipe too hard this time,” she noted wryly. This just made Sunset giggle more.

“Okay, okay,” Sunset covered her face and took a deep breath. “I’m cool.” She took another deep breath and looked at her friend seriously. “I’m cool. Please, AJ, go ahead. Why aren’t the Apples country royalty, and why do you think I should care?”

Applejack tilted her hat in gratitude for the undivided attention, then reached up to loosely grip her truck’s steering wheel. “All right. I suppose to start, you know my Ma passed from breast cancer, right?”

Sunset nodded. “Yes, I remember when you told me.” It had been the summer before senior year. Applejack had invited her to join her family and their friends for dinner to mark Pear Butter’s birthday. It was a low-key day meant to celebrate their late mother. That was the first time Sunset got to participate since her reformation. She’d missed the one the year before because she’d still been evil at the time. The dinner was grand, like a holiday dinner, and the memories of Pear Butter flowed like golden cider:

The family feud with the Pears that had nearly kept her parents apart. That time Pear had to climb onto the roof to get the family rooster. The day her mother realized that Born in the USA wasn’t a patriotic song. The glorious victory she shared with Applejack at the county fair’s three-legged race.

The gathering was about recounting what a beautiful person and an excellent mother Pear Butter had been, all whilst enjoying some of her favorite foods. Cinnamon pear and apple crisp. Apple chicken sausages. Wild rice salad with thinly sliced apples and chopped pecans.

Applejack ran her hand over her steering wheel as she turned her head to peer down the street. There was no one in sight, and further up the road large brick buildings loomed with faded advertisements painted onto their sides from the Industrial era.

“My mama’s passing was hard on my Pa,” she murmured, her mind’s eye vividly recalling Bright Mac’s sunken face as they buried her. “They was madly in love, always doing sweet things for one another, hugging and kissing and carrying on. I don’t think I ever saw them fight about a damn thing. They were the perfect couple.”

Applejack chewed on the inside of her lower lip before continuing. “I think when the docs told my Ma that she didn’t have much time left, my Pa didn’t want to believe it. He was certain she’d beat it. That she had years, not months, to live.”

She sighed, shifting her hat further back on her head so that when she let her head tilt to rest against the back of her seat, the top of it mashed in but remained in place. This was a secret only since their friends and peers weren’t aware of the details. For a while, it was the hot goss out in the rural areas surrounding Canterlot City. She supposed people still remembered. She hoped they didn’t. “Bright Mac fell apart after Pear Butter passed. He… started drinking a lot. He stayed out at the bars. Granny Smith became the one to put us young’uns to bed.” Applejack squinted her eyes. “I can still remember staying up late, hearing her pleading with him in the middle of the night when he’d come home stumblin’ drunk. ‘Mac, Pear’s gone, but you still got your children! They need their daddy!’”

Applejack ran her tongue over her teeth and smacked her lips. “Usually after Granny would lay into him, he’d start tryin’ again. Y’know, being an actual parent. He’d clean up. Swear he’d lay off the sauce.” She frowned and shook her head. “The longest he’d managed was a month before he went back to the bars.”

“That sounds really difficult,” she heard Sunset murmur. She looked over at the other girl to see her friend’s eyes tensed with compassion and sympathy. “Was it… kind of like Big Mac?” she asked with a quick grimace. “Sorry. Maybe that’s not appropriate to ask.”

Applejack swiped a hand through the air. “No, I don’t mind.” She nodded once. “To answer your question… Yeah. It was kinda like Big Mac’s drinkin’. ‘Cept Pa went to the bars more, and Big Macintosh is more of a homebody.” Her eyebrows lifted. How had she not seen that connection? “Huh. Weird that I never noticed that before.”

Sunset fingered her leather chaps as she let her gaze dance back and forth between this task and Applejack’s face. “So did Bright Mac pass from something related to his drinking?”

Applejack smirked. “Sorta.” She licked her lips and slid down her seat a little so that her knees pushed out far enough to press against the underside of her truck’s dashboard. “You see, the drinking made my Pa into a different person. He never lost his temper with us, but he sure would blow his top at the bar.”

She placed her hands on her stomach and drummed her fingers. “My Pa got into a few fights. Other times he’d get arrested for being drunk in public. Big Mac had to watch my sister and me while Granny went and bailed him out.”

Sunset drew her legs up and hugged them to her chest. Her lips pressed thin. “How did you feel when that happened? Were you scared?”

Applejack glanced at her. “For my Pa? Sure. Mostly I was just mad at him. It was like… Okay. I lost my mama. Now my pop’s gone and lost his mind. It felt unfair because Ma was good and buried. Pa was alive, but he was out there throwin’ hands with any feller that’d look at him sideways. He couldn’t handle bein’ without her. It felt like he forgot what he was to us.”

“I’m sorry,” Sunset breathed. Her forehead was wrinkled as she gazed quietly at her friend. “That’s such a painful thing to think about when you’re just a kid.”

A crease appeared at the corner of Applejack’s nostril, lifting her upper lip in a disdainful curl, before this smoothed away almost as quickly as it came. “I know it ain’t a contest, but it weren’t the worst thing. I knew my Pa still loved us. He just… had trouble doin’ his fatherly duty, if that makes sense. He wanted to scrap with the world instead. Then one night, he picked the wrong fight.”

Sunset’s eyes widened a little. “What happened?” Her voice was hushed.

Applejack looked over at her. Her eyes searched the other girl’s features–the sad curve of her lips, the dull gleam of the dashboard clock reflecting off her moist eyes, the casual and yet vulnerable way she curled up in her seat…

Why, oh why, had she failed to see what a tremendous person Sunset was? She’d forgiven the girl long ago for her past acts, including all the painful insults and the attempt to break up their friends. Had she just been blinded by her love of Fluttershy?

Applejack tried to swallow but found her mouth was dry. She tried again anyway, and her throat muscles moved with effort. It was only now that she realized she hadn’t ever said these words aloud. “My Pa got into a fight with a cowpoke named Dusty Trails. He’d come in for the rodeo from Texas. Apparently, he was some up-and-comer in the bull-riding circuit. Well, Dusty took great exception to my Pa’s lip, so whilst they was both loaded up on whiskey, he took out a revolver and shot Pa dead.”

Sunset flinched, then turned her face into her knees. “Oh no.”

Applejack sighed yet again. “Eyup.” She toyed with a button on her vest. “He died at the bar. Bled out a’fore the paramedics could patch ‘im up. Dusty panicked and hoofed it out of there, pronto.”

When their house had gotten the call late that night, Granny’s scream had sent Applejack tumbling out of bed. She’d been eight years old, dressed in a green PJ set with wild mustangs on the shirt. Big Mac had emerged from his room too, shirtless and his red hair sticking up in the back.

They found their grandmother weeping desolately on the kitchen floor, the corded phone clutched to her chest as the curly cord strained to stay connected to the wall-mounted phone base.

Applejack tried to swallow again and found it difficult for entirely different reasons. “Granny Smith was heartbroken, o’ course. Next day it took me, Mac, and AB to hold her down. Dusty was still on the loose, and she wasn’t havin’ it.”

She squinted her eyes as the memory of her grandmother wielding a double-barreled shotgun flashed across her mind. They’d struggled with her on her bed, and she’d hollered at them to let her go. Applejack had held the older woman’s thick legs while her brother wrestled the shotgun from her. Apple Bloom, crying, had sat on Granny’s chest.

“She was ready to get her revenge on that cowpoke for takin’ her only son. But we begged and begged her. ‘Granny, you’re all we got now!’” Her words hitched, and Applejack squeezed her eyes shut.

She hadn’t cried about this for years. She wouldn’t start up again now. Weed be damned.

“They caught the man who killed your father, though, right?” Sunset asked with a tiny voice. She was looking at Applejack again. Her face was drawn tight with her sympathy.

Applejack nodded. With a grunt, she pushed herself back up her seat so that her spine was no longer in an L-shape. That position had started aching her back. “Yeah, the cowpoke turned himself in late the next day and confessed to all of it.” She punched a hand into her waiting fist and stared through her steering wheel. “Granny let us all go to court with her for his sentencing. She said she wanted us to know that justice was real, even if it weren’t perfect.”

Her ears tickled with the phantom memory of the gavel being struck. The judge, high up in his seat, peered shrewdly down at Dusty Trails. The disgraced cowboy had short-cropped periwinkle blue hair, cactus green eyes, and a tattoo of a starry desert night on his left forearm. She’d never seen him dressed in anything but an orange jumpsuit. The young man, only twenty at the time, looked haggard and sorrowful as the judge handed him his sentence.

“Ol’ Dusty got twenty-five years with the possibility of parole. I ain’t never seen Granny so mad. She’d wanted him to get more than that.” Applejack actually chuckled a little, her chin tucking as she recalled her then-portly grandmother hootin’ and hollerin’ outside of the courthouse. When she quieted, she swiped at her nose and gripped her steering wheel again. “Me? I was just glad he was going to prison at all. There are plenty of killers who get off light, but at least this one had enough honor in him to turn around and take responsibility for what he did. From what I learned about Dusty later, he coulda vanished off to Mexico and never been found again. He didn’t. I have to give ‘im props for that.”

“Are you still angry at him?” Sunset asked, letting her legs slip back off her seat so that she could lean heavily on her knees. “I would be.”

Applejack considered the question with puckered lips. After a moment, she slowly shook her head. “No… Not anymore.” Her eyebrows lifted. “I used to be.” She shrugged, her head rocking with the motion. “Dusty was a kid at the time, not much older than we are now. He was drunk, and I know my Pa could act a fool when he got into his cups, too.”

“Is that why you don’t like drinking outside of the farm?” Sunset asked with a small frown. Her eyes widened. “Wait, is that why you wanted to come with me tonight? Even though Gold Fang has it out for me?”

Applejack gave her a pursed smile. “Part of it. I also just care a ton about ya, Sunset.”

Sunset held her eyes for a while. After a moment, she smiled. “You’re a good friend.”

Applejack’s lips flared wider. “You too.” She let her hand slip off the steering wheel to slap against her own thigh. “Welp! That’s the sordid tale. I swear the whole damn county knew about it at the time.” She bit her lip. Should she say the next part? It was related, after all.

What was she thinking, of course she should say.

Almost reluctantly, her mouth began to move. The words came almost in a slow slur, “That’s… how I met the others. A gaggle of kids was makin’ fun of me and Apple Bloom for havin’ a drunk dad. They called us white trash.” She rolled her eyes. “They was doing this in full view of their parents, too. It was common knowledge amongst the country folk what happened to my family. They didn’t say a word about the bullying.” Applejack smirked. “Then Rainbow Dash showed up outta the blue and stuck up for us.”

She chuckled roughly, recalling her brash friend shouting herself hoarse as insult after insult streamed from her mouth. The bullies, a trio of boys who she couldn’t even recall the names of, had cowered from the diminutive rainbow-haired girl. Her chuckles quieted as she recalled what happened next. “While Dashie was doing that, Fluttershy came over and just kinda… hugged me and AB. She didn’t introduce herself or say much past ‘Sorry’. She held on till Granny came back from what she’d been doing.” She shook her head, her smile turning crooked. “This all happened at a park, mind you. Not at school. I’d never seen those two before in my life. Granny had taken me and my siblings there to try and cheer us up on the one-year anniversary of my Pa’s passing. She was busy getting ice creams with Big Mac while all the hoopla happened.”

“I’m glad they were there to help you,” Sunset remarked with a little smile. “Is that how you guys became friends?”

Applejack shook her head. “No. Not right away. I didn’t see ‘em again till we started at Canterlot Middle a couple years later.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I never forgot what they did for me that day, though. When I saw ‘em again, I was real happy. Rainbow needed time to recall who I was, but once she did it was like we’d always been friends and never stopped. But Fluttershy she… she remembered me. Clear as day.”

Sunset’s eyes tensed, her lips pressing together. “She has a big heart. I’m sure she never forgot how much those boys had hurt you.”

Applejack punched at her steering wheel lightly. “Yeah…” She scratched at her cheek. “In fact, it was Shy who made it possible for me to forgive Dusty in the first place,” Applejack went on quietly. “This was in eighth grade. Ol’ Dusty was up for a parole hearing again, and I was rippin’ mad. None of the others could figure out why I was so darned moody that day. Y’know what Fluttershy told me?”

“What?” Sunset prompted softly.

“She said, ‘Applejack, I’m ever so sorry that you’re feeling upset today. Whatever is the matter, please remember that you’re too kind and too strong to let anything hold you back.’”

Sunset’s eyebrows lifted. “Wow.”

Applejack let out a short laugh. “Eyup.”

Sunset bent over, leaning her elbows on her knees as she stared through the dashboard. “Wow,” she said again, blinking slowly. “Fluttershy’s always been secretly based, hasn’t she?”

Instead of speaking, Applejack just bobbed her head in a big goofy nod. Yes. Fluttershy had always been a soft voice, but she’d also been frighteningly good at cutting to the heart of the matter when speaking her mind. Maybe she’d learned to do that because of how little people minded her. If Applejack had trouble getting others' attention the way their shy friend did, she supposed she’d learn to say what she needed to with as few words as possible too.

“She did the same to me the other day, about Capper,” Sunset murmured. “She reminded me that my redemption had only been possible because others had given me a chance.” The redhead turned her head to look at Applejack. Her cyan eyes were sharp, commanding the cowgirl’s hair to stand on end. “I can see why you like her.” Her voice was soft and bright…

…But the words felt so distancing.

Applejack felt her body tighten, and she looked away. She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t bother. She felt self-conscious of the fact that she’d brought up her crush in the first place, but like Sunset’s reluctance to relate the tales of how she’d been shot, she supposed airing out dirty laundry wasn’t finished till you’d pulled out every rotten stinking sock.

There was a beat of silence. Applejack wondered helplessly if she’d killed the mood. Not so much with the story of her father, but more because she’d brought up Fluttershy. She’d seen the dismay that crossed Sunset’s face when she’d reacted to their friend’s name earlier. Did it make Applejack pathetic that she’d never forgotten the soft touch of Fluttershy’s embrace? The silky feel of her pink hair? The gentleness of her big blue eyes? She’d been taller back then at the park, and she’d slouched to compensate. But when she drew in for that hug… The shy girl had unfurled, like a flower going into bloom.

That pretty sight had stayed with Applejack until they’d reunited much later.

“Thank you for sharing that with me, AJ,” Sunset said quietly. Her words were stronger now. “That must’ve been difficult.”

Applejack looked at her sidelong as she shrugged her mouth. “Heck, telling it wasn’t so bad.”

Sunset leaned back and crossed her arms. “So you think your father’s death marred your family’s honor or something?”

“In the eyes of the county, yeah I s’pose so.”

This earned a scoff from Sunset. “Gossipy people are not worth listening to.” She looked earnestly at her. “Your family may not be country royalty, but you’re all still plenty awesome to me, Applejack.”

The cowgirl could feel her face burn and she nervously tapped a quick rhythm on her steering wheel with her index fingers. “That’s kind of you, Sunset. But I just want you to remember. Every time you’re with me and you’re feeling like me and my kin have it all figured out… well, we don’t. And I don’t think we ever did.”

Sunset watched her quietly for a moment before smiling. “Okay.”

The song referenced in the chapter does not belong to me. It's Little Black Submarines from the Black Keys.