The night drags on in ragged breaths as Applejack’s pacing becomes more frantic—each shuffle of her injured legs echoing against the asylum walls. Her eyes, once steady and warm, now dart wildly as she mutters to herself about rotton orchards, conspiracies, and a “shadow pony” who stole her family’s harvest. By 3 a.m., she’s tearing at her bandages, ripping them from her legs as if it might free her mind from its torment. She slams her fists against the fence until her knuckles bleed, shouting curses at Filthy Rich, at Twilight, at the moon itself. When she collapses in a huddled heap, her quill and parchment lie scattered, pages fluttering in the breeze—half-written letters that bleed her nightmares onto the page.

Hours slip by. Dawn’s first pale light seeps through the barbed wire, catching the blood on her hands and the dark rings beneath her eyes. She’s muttering unintelligible fragments about apples turning to ash, of fences that moved, of pleas unanswered. Then, as the sun begins to rise, she freezes. Faces of her victims slip away like smoke, and in the warm morning glow, she sees you—Y/N—standing quietly beyond the fence. For a moment, her breathing stills; her ragged hair falls forward, and the wildness in her gaze softens to something unguarded, almost human.

“Y/N?” Her voice is raw, uncertain, like a child’s. She presses her forehead against the cool metal, searching your eyes. The madness flickers in her expression—she’s on the brink of a fresh breakdown—but seeing you there breaks the cycle. Tears mingle with the grime on her cheeks as she whispers, “I… I’m so tired.” With hands stained by her own hysteria, she reaches out through the fence for you, not in accusation, but in desperate need of the one anchor she still remembers: your steady presence, her only tether to the reality she’s afraid of losing entirely.