Braeburn was brought to a good hospital.

Not the best that bits could buy, though that was partly out of the proximity to Ponyville in the first place. As far as anypony was concerned, there was only one hospital in Ponyville. Applejack fussed and protested when this was pointed out, but no one jumped to allay her fears. There was just one hospital; there always had been.

Braeburn would have looked out-of-place if they’d let him keep his hat. Instead, they had tucked it away for safekeeping, leaving him feeling frustrated and, also, a little bit naked. He wore the blankets up to his chest after the intoxication of his sleep had worn off and refused to take them further than a few inches away from his chin before they returned to their original place. Applejack sighed, but made no inquiries about what her cousin’s motivation might be other than perhaps a simple affinity for hospital sheets.

She couldn’t imagine why anypony would want that, though.

Her friends had shown up with minimal announcement, saying they had overheard and wanted to come see if Braeburn was okay. Applejack had declined to let them in, bustling at the door and saying that they could come back later; her cousin needed his rest. But Braeburn undermined her, saying from the comfort of his cot that it was fine and he’d be happy to see them.

“I need to relearn everyone’s names sometime or another,” he’d said.

Applejack had glared at him like a nervous mother, but after a few seconds of Braeburn’s earnest smile she had relented, and opened the door to let her friends inside.

Braeburn had done his best to greet the five-pony procession warmly, despite his lack of mobility. The doctors had stressed they weren’t worried about his health, overall; Applejack had done a good job untying him, and there seemed to be no permanent damage to his breathing or any part of him otherwise. Nevertheless, they had said it would be best to keep him overnight for a day or two, just to give him time to recover. Braeburn hadn’t agreed, but Applejack’s vote had overwhelmed his own, accompanied by the steely stare and grim expression that went with it.

Over the next half-hour, Braeburn reacquainted himself with Applejack’s friends.

Pinkie Pie had made herself visible first, bouncing to Braeburn’s bedside and bombarding him with get-well cards, most of which she had written. She had restrained herself, knowing too much exuberance would earn a disapproving look from Applejack, but Braeburn had thanked her for the cards and gotten off with a boop on the nose before Pinkie scurried back outside.

Twilight had given him a book and some nervous looking well-wishes, both of which he accepted with gratitude. Fluttershy was torn between her normal nurturing instinct and the awkwardness of what felt like meeting someone new, and had settled on a squeaked ‘I hope you feel better soon’ before she dashed off. Braeburn had smiled at the timbre of her timidness, and thanked her on her way out the door.

Rarity had come, and it had been awkward.

As she walked up to the bed, Braeburn felt his cousin’s eyes on him. There was an unspoken tension in the air even if Rarity couldn’t see it, and Braeburn wasn’t sure if the origin was from himself or elsewhere. He felt a sort of pressure, like he was about to come face to face with something he should have confronted a long time ago.

Rarity had said nothing objectionable. She was careful and considerate as she rubbed Braeburn’s shoulder with her hoof and said she was happy to see him in Ponyville and that she hoped he recovered soon.

The moment her hoof left, Braeburn thanked her and was surprised at the earnest tone in his own voice. He felt the weight depart at once. His heart thumped loudly in his chest, as though it might finally be free of constriction.

Rainbow Dash had come last. Utterly unlike herself, she had huddled in the corner as her friends said their ‘hello’s and ‘get well’s. The window at the side of the room caught her attention, and she stared out it, watching the wind shake the boughs of the nearby trees in the field aside the hospital. She had avoided looks from Applejack, including a very pointed ‘ah’ that Applejack had let out before catching herself and returning to silence, abandoning the beginnings of a potential sentence.

Dash moved slowly up to Braeburn’s side as the room neared its previous occupancy. She looked him over for a moment with a soft smile on her face, her cheeks carrying a hint of blush.

Braeburn smiled at her unassumingly. He didn’t have trouble remembering her name.

“Rainbow Dash, right?” he’d asked.

Dash had nodded, and grinned.

Though her mouth twinkled at the edges like she had something important to say, she kept silent until she was next to Braeburn’s bed, and then, still silent, had leaned towards the stallion and placed her mouth to his ear. Her lips moved as she whispered something.

Applejack craned her neck to hear, but found the conversation too low for her to understand.

Dash went on for a minute before she pulled away. Braeburn’s expression changed, turning into a mixture of surprise and giddiness. Dash’s face looked the latter half as she pulled herself off the bed. After a second, though, her eyes flickered as though a light had sparked to life behind them. Without further pause, she had leaned back, and, to the surprise of both Braeburn and Applejack, given Braeburn a kiss on the cheek.

And then she had fled with blush burning its way onto her face.

Applejack narrowed her eyes at the rapidly disappearing multicoloured tail, but her expression softened as the door closed. There was no need to be overly protective.

That left the two of them alone in the hospital room again.

Applejack cleared her throat.

“So,” she started, ambling off her corner chair towards Braeburn’s bed.

A knock at the door interrupted her. It was loud and heavy, like a tiny battering ram.

Applejack’s eyes widened, but she went to the door quickly. Big Macintosh peered at her through the crack between the doorway as she carefully pulled on the handle.

“Oh, Macintosh,” she said with a sigh, “it’s just you. Did ya wanna come in, or...?”

Mac nodded and made his way inside, nudging Applejack out of the way.

For the first time during his visiting hours, Braeburn felt uneasy.

The girls visiting had been different—he had no attachment to them other than the names in the back of his head that he could only foggily recall. But Big Mac was different. He was family, and more than that, family that had invited Braeburn to visit, for a vacation away from his life of obligation and work and duty and scorching desert sun. He was Braeburn’s cousin, and one who had only seen the results of Braeburn’s inner turmoil second hand.

Braeburn felt a white-hot shame well up in his throat.  He could feel the tears tickling the corners of his eyes.

“Big Mac,” he said, and let the name stand on its own for a moment as he tried to speak through the lump in his throat. He couldn’t look Mac in the eyes.

“I’m real sorry that I... after you and Applejack invited me up an’ all, I didn’t mean to...”

Mac moved surprisingly quick for such a large pony. In an instant he was at Braeburn’s bedside, looming over him with an unreadable expression. Big Mac was no behemoth by pony standards, but above Braeburn’s slim, still recuperating frame, he felt gigantic.

Braeburn felt a tiny wail brew up in his chest.

It was forced from him almost instantly as Mac grabbed Braeburn’s body and pulled him into a hug. It was a hug that made Braeburn feel as though he was being squeezed between pieces of red, furry lumber. He wanted to protest in service of his recovering airways, but decided to grin and bear it. The hug only lasted a few seconds before Big Macintosh let go, and Braeburn fell back to his bed, slightly out of breath.

“Don’t apologize for nothin’,” Big Mac said. “Nothin’s a bother with family, as long as you're okay at the end of the day.”

And that weight too went away. Braeburn’s throat recovered, the lump disappearing with Big Mac’s words.

“Thanks, cuz,” he said, almost whispered. Big Macintosh gave him a nod, and then turned to the door as quickly as he came. Applejack held it open for him, and the latch clicked into place as the door shut, leaving Applejack and Braeburn alone in the room again.

The wind blew outside, waving the tree branches towards the window like eager hands in the breeze.

Applejack sighed, and Braeburn did the same. Neither of them seemed to have the strength for words.

A minute or two of silence passed between them. It was a soft silence, not at all imposing in any sort of awkwardness or arresting lack of speech. It was silence simply for the sake of nothing to say. Neither of them needed words; the understanding had passed between them already, through heartfelt glances—and, most concretely, from the reassuring touch of Applejack’s hoof as she had consoled her cousin, coaxing the breath back into his lungs and muffling the ‘sorry’ that wished for freedom on his tongue. She had said, with that touch, that no more ‘sorry’s would be necessary.

But still, Applejack cleared her throat again.

Something needed to be said.

“Cuz,” she said.

Braeburn didn’t respond right away. He let the hollow sound of the hospital room carry the absent conversation for a moment, until after a minute he turned to his cousin. The look on his lips said ‘sorry’. Applejack shook her head.

“Don’t,” she said.

Braeburn shook his head too.

“I’m sorry, Applejack. I didn’t mean to... all of this, I’m so sorry...”

Applejack was at the bedside immediately, leaning into Braeburn’s shoulder with a hoof around his back, squeezing him and rubbing up in down. She murmured a ‘shhh’ into his ear, though the tears that might have crept into Braeburn’s eyes hadn’t found their way there yet.

“It’s okay,” she said. A few more rubs of her hoof followed, joined by shaky breaths from Braeburn.

The two of them held each other like that for a while, Applejack holding Braeburn more than he could hold her back. That was okay, because it was him who needed it more.

Applejack’s tongue wetted her lips after a while longer, and she opened her mouth in imitation of speech a few times before finally saying something.

“I... I can’t not ask, cuz. You don’t gotta tell me, but I gotta ask.”

Braeburn nodded into his cousin’s foreleg. He pressed his snout into her fur, still miraculously dry in absence of tears.

“Why?” Applejack asked.

Braeburn shook his head. His muzzle rubbed against Applejack’s coat.

“You don’t gotta tell me,” Applejack said.

Braeburn lightened his shaking and looked up. Applejack gave him her best smile, weary though it was. Tempered in the same way all displays of happiness were in the confines of a hospital.

Braeburn let out a long, slow breath.

“I think I do,” he said.

Applejack held her her hoof on Braeburn’s back, pressing it softly into his fur.

“It’s ’cause... ’cause you were the only one who mattered.”

Applejack let the words sink in for a minute before opening her mouth. Before admitting she needed more, when she hadn’t wanted to ask for anything.

“‘Mattered’?” she asked, her tone as soft as she could manage it.

Braeburn gave a short nod.

“On... on the way over, on the train.” Braeburn straightened himself out on the bed, and Applejack withdrew her hoof from his back.

“On the way over, I spent the whole time with... with my book, thinkin’ about what I was gonna say, how I was gonna say it. I went through the morning a million times, wondering what I’d tell you, and how you’d take it. And I never thought... I didn’t think you’d...” Braeburn’s sentence trailed off, his voice trembling a little bit. Like the tears might start coming now.

Applejack moved her hoof to reach out to him, but Braeburn shook his head.

“But why, Braeburn? I know what I said was... I know I was actin’ a real fine fool, and nothin’s worse than what I said then. I know I was a dummy.” Applejack lowered her head. Her eyes flickered as the alley conversation flashed across her recollection. “But that doesn’t mean you had to go an’... there’s no reason to do that. I can’t imagine how everypony woulda been if I hadn’t found you...”

“I’m sorry, Applejack.”

“No, wait. Listen, you don’t have to... you don’t have to be sorry. That ain’t what I’m aimin’ for.” Applejack lifted her head again, and her mouth turned sour. “I just mean... I can’t imagine why somethin’ silly ol’ me would say could make you wanna... go and do somethin’ like that. Even if it was the stupidest thing I coulda said.”

Applejack smiled in her self-admonishment, and Braeburn returned the gesture with one of his own, softened by the heavy atmosphere of the room.

“I know, AJ. I didn’t... I wasn’t really thinking when I did all that. I mean, that’s gotta go without saying, right?”

Applejack nodded.

“The thing is though,” Braeburn began, turning his head to the side to stare out the nearby window. “The thing is... I knew, even though it didn’t make sense, that I still felt like I had to do it. Because... on the way over, on that train, thinking about all the things I was gonna say, coulda said, mighta said to tell you how I... how I felt... I knew that the only reason I was thinking about it so much was because it was you. Because out of all the ponies in the world I could have told, you’d be the one who mattered.”

“But why me?” Applejack’s voice practically fell apart as she leaned on the corner of the hospital bed. She tried to hide the shudder of her words behind a grim grin, but Braeburn turned to her, and his expression faltered as he saw the sadness welling up in her eyes.

“Because—”

“I ain’t nobody special, Braeburn. Heck, I’m just your cousin. You coulda at least told Big Macintosh, for gosh's sake!” Applejack threw her hooves up in the air, and the tears were real then, though they were in her eyes, where she hadn’t expected them.

Braeburn lifted his own forelegs as Applejack fell forward, and he held her the same way she’d held him a minute ago, rubbing his hoof on the small of her back.

Applejack didn’t sob, but she sniffled into her cousin’s shoulder, and wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye.

“Why me, Braeburn? Why was what I had to say so important?”

Amidst the sound of Applejack’s sniffling, Braeburn’s mouth started and stopped once or twice, as though he himself was having hard time finding the answer. But his eyes caught a brightness of understanding shortly thereafter, and he nodded, more to himself than anyone.

“Because... because you’re family, AJ.”

Applejack lifted her head from Braeburn’s shoulder, and turned to him, her cheeks slightly damp with tears.

“I thought about tellin’ somepony else... tellin’ the folks in Appleloosa, tellin’ anyone else in the family. But you know... you know we’ve always been close. The closest. Even if we ain’t lived in the same place for ages, even if I coulda told someone else... it wouldn’t have mattered. You’re my family, and that’s what’s always mattered most to me.”

Braeburn sighed, and let Applejack go from between his forelegs at the behest of her movement backwards.

“I guess just... the idea of my whole family thinkin’ that way about me, especially if my cousin did, the one pony whose opinion really matters to me... well, I didn’t want to think about it, I guess. I couldn’t think about it. And that’s why I kinda... wasn’t thinking.”

The air cleared again. The ambient hum of hospital room machinery and lighting took over again, and both ponies shared a few silent breaths, looking away from each other and into their own heads.

“I’m sorry.” Applejack’s voice broke the silence. She looked at Braeburn, then back down to the floor, hiding her shame in the avoidance of her cousin’s eyes.

Braeburn shook his head.

“It’s okay, cuz. I’m sorry, too.”

The silence returned. Neither pony looking at each other, but hiding maybe-smiles under the somber air of their unspoken sentences.

After a few minutes, Applejack cleared her throat again. She looked up from the floor, her green eyes free of tears and returned to their normal brightness.

Braeburn looked up at her. The two locked eyes for a minute and smiled.

Applejack’s smile beamed even wider, and her cheeks shone with the force of her smirk. “So,” she said, a twinkle in her eyes under the brim of her hat. “Does he have a name?”

Braeburn grinned at her.