So The Other May Live

by Georg

Rating: teen
Tags: Drama, Original Character, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Death
Length: 8789

The most difficult decision a father can make is which of his children must die so the other may live.

When their child's life is held in the balance, a father can find himself doing terrible things to save him. They will take dangerous risks, travel to places they have never been, and sometimes, even that is not enough.

The most difficult decision a parent can make is which of their children must die so the other may live.

Picture courtesy of Farm Yard Nurseries in Wales

This is not canon to Estee's works. It was influenced by the author, and if you enjoy it please feel free to read all the rest of their stories and contribute to the associated Patreon. They're worth it.

Published 2019-09-09 12:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2019-09-10 11:40:55 UTC

1. The Hammer

Author's Note

The following story is not canon to the Triptych series by Estee. What it is… Have you ever wondered just what a story would look like if written by a different writer? Harry Potter written by Jim Butcher. The Dragons of Pern as written by John Scalzi. Star Wars Episode 1-3 and everything after 6 if written by… just about anybody else provided George Lucas is issued a restraining order, and his ex-wife brought in to edit. The Traveling Tutor and the Librarian in Triptych in the Esteeverse.

Well, nobody really thinks about that last one.

Except me.

We’ve done a little sharing between our ‘verses… well, I’ve borrowed several characters and I think Green Grass got one off-hand reference, but you know what I mean. So I got to thinking.

How would Green Grass have fared in Estee’s ‘verse?

So I wrote something up and sent it to Estee for examination, got it back with a few stunning critiques of my horrible misconceptions, rewrote it to line up better, rewrote it again, and again, and… Well, take a look. I think I’m treading the line between homage and stalking.

1. The Hammer

So The Other May Live
The Hammer

Martel Chandler, Baron of Chrysanthum, had been named for the hammer of their family seal, and that stubborn determination had served him well through the years. Broad and powerful in the shoulders as well as his determined mind, he had graduated top of his class in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. He was a strong pony, from a line of strong ponies, all the way back eight generations to the first Chrysanthum who had forged their House business out of a pile of scrap metal and a hammer. After the last few months, Martel had new respect for what those pieces of scrap had gone through. Steel did not fear the hammer, but steel required violence to shape it, to form dull ingots into useful objects. Steel had no choice in the matter. The hammer ruled.

Ponies seemed to require the same process. The blows hurt, although with every stroke, Martel had grown stronger. The stallion sitting patiently in the doctor’s office was furlongs distant from the young colt who had to shoulder the burden of becoming a Baron far before he was ready, to take a wife he had never seen before when his family had ordered it, to lead when he would have rather followed stronger, older parents.

That choice had been taken away too. The crushing burden was now his own until he could pass it down to his children, and they in turn would pass it on to theirs. Curse or blessing, power or powerless, it was his responsibility, and Martel would not buckle under the strain.

“Mama?” The small green foal in the stroller stirred, looking up at his father with dark eyes. “Mama?” he repeated, with a patience that he had demonstrated would last until his question was answered.

“Your mother is fine,” said Martel. “The doctor is with her. She will be here shortly.”

His son nodded, then pawed at the knit cap covering his head. During his nap, it had gotten scrunched up to the point it was starting to come down over his bushy eyebrows. Green Grass was a furry foal, which camouflaged his relative lack of musculature and the way his head was too large for his scrawny body. It took only a few moments for Martel to adjust the warm cap over his son’s hornless head, check the diaper for moisture, and bring out a bottle. That was a word he knew too.

“Bottle,” declared Green Grass. “Up.”

“What do we say?”

Martel hovered the bottle in his magic, feeling marginally better about his situation due to the distraction. His pregnant wife had been examined many times in the last few weeks, with only one answer to his questions. Little Green Grass had been through much the same ever since his troubled birth, holding onto life with a tenacious grip through fevers, shakes, and midnight frights. Only a fool would throw away money on a lost cause, and Martel of House Chrysanthemum was no fool. His wife would live. His children, both born and unborn would live. Death was inevitable for all ponies, great or small, but not today.

“Up,” declared the foal again. He struggled out of his blanket and put both sock-clad forehooves over the edge of the stroller with the firm confidence that his father would not allow him to fall. “Up!”

“We spoil you so.” Allowing himself the smallest of smiles, Martel floated his son up out of the stroller and into the crook of his foreleg, then allowed him to suckle on the bottle of expensive formula, filled with specific vitamins and precise chemical mixtures. It was a far cry from the intravenous feedings and stomach tubes of his birth, and even though the foal only managed to drink half of the bottle before stopping, Martel could not help but feel a surge of joy at that small task. “Are you sure you don’t want any more? Just one more drop?”

Green Grass shook his head. Despite the troubles of his birth, he was brilliant for his age. Those piercing eyes, sunken into hollow eye sockets so the glitter of blue was overwhelmed by their surroundings, never missed anything, and if not watched closely, he would escape from wherever he was placed to explore the world on wobbly legs, just to see what he could see. If only he was not so stubborn.

“Say daddy. Come on, Greenie. Say daddy. Please?”

The foal closed his eyes, or at least looked as if he were going to take another brief nap. He could have been faking it. From the smile, he certainly looked as if he were faking. Martel remained sitting on the cushion with his son tucked into the crook of a foreleg anyway.

Martel refused to cry. He was strong. Green Grass was strong too. The doctors claimed he would not survive the birth. They were wrong. They said he would never grow. In the last year, he had proved them wrong also, even if he did not grow as much as any of them wished. He would not die. He was a Chrysanthemum. He was steel. Someday, he would become a pony that even the pessimistic doctors would look up to. An example. His son.

The faint click of the office door made Martel look up from his musings about his sleeping son, and instead take in the calm face of the nurse who was standing there.

“Doctor Gentle Arrival has begun your wife’s examination and will be with you shortly. Do you need anything? I can watch your foal if you want.”

“No, thank you,” said Martel out of reflex, although he felt a need to explain since he was in a surgical center, and the nurse certainly looked like she knew what she was doing. “My son has some rare medical issues. Not that you aren’t trained in that regard, but we are much more familiar with his idiosyncrasies.”

It was a long word to describe over a year of doctor visits and intensive studying of symptoms until Martel felt as if he could teach a class on Pollychan’s Disorder. The rest of his older children had been so easy, until this one. They slept through the night, obeyed, and… Well, Martel would never admit it, but raising an earth pony foal in a family full of unicorns had taken some getting used to. A sick one had been a full-time job. Then Spring had gotten pregnant again, and Martel found his time at home monopolized every minute instead of his usual dawn-to-dusk work habits. Eye drops and ear drops and solid pills, cremes for rashes and ointment for lesions, a moment by moment effort split between two subjects to keep the feeble foal fed and his wife cared for.

Thankfully, the young nurse did not look offended by having her offer of assistance turned down.

“Doctor Gentle would like to examine your son privately, if that is acceptable.”

“No.” Without really meaning to, Martel turned to interpose his body between the nurse and his son. “The consultation involves all of us.”

“You are here because Doctor Gentle granted your request,” said the nurse in less of a subservient fashion than Martel wished. “That includes a private examination of your son.”

As much as he wanted to object, the stress and fatigue of the last months dragged on him like an anchor. There had been so many doctors, all of whom had done their best to press his fragile son one tiny increment or another closer to life and away from the grim embrace of death. That fleeting hope dangling in front of Martel had become a torture as each doctor had sounded so optimistic about their treatments at the beginning, only to fade into glum acceptance when the magical pills or tonics failed to improve Green Grass’ condition more than slightly.

The inconspicuous stallion who had answered his invitation last week did not say anything about Green Grass, and Martel had not volunteered any information. The visitor had emphasized his role as a simple conduit, a middle-pony who listened to Martel speak about his wife Spring and the embryonic twins who endangered her life. The fact that the doctor wanted to examine Green Grass today gave his heart the slightest burst of hope. Still, Martel had spent so much effort into getting this exact meeting, so if it had even the slightest chance of improving their chances…

“If I must,” admitted Martel. “Although I will not permit him to be handled by any others. I would prefer the doctor examines him in my presence.”

Time crawled past, proving his decision to keep Green Grass was wise, because the foal kept his spirits up, giggling and entertaining his much larger father with snot bubbles or waves of his tiny green hooves. Through subtle manipulation of his own, Martel had just managed to get the last of the formula into his son and rocked him to sleep when the door thumped again, and the nurse wheeled his wife into the office.

“Hello, Spring,” he ventured, trying not to disturb his son’s slumber. “Did the procedure go well?”

“I’m still a little woozy from the anesthesia spell,” she admitted, shifting positions in the wheelchair with no obvious attempt to stand up on her own. That cheerful yellow coat was a balm to his eyes, and Martel soaked her welcome presence in while she continued, “The doctor did not want to say anything while examining me, but his grunting sounded optimistic.”

“As it should be, M’lady.”

The doctor was only a few steps behind, and swept into the room with the energy of somepony half his age. Martel still did not trust him, although that could be said of most ponies he knew. This one’s bright orange eyes were far too optimistic, too eager to press forward. He had seen that expression too often in applicants for the Chrysanthemum organization, from eager young unicorns ready to change the world. Well, the world had enough craters and explosions in his opinion, and far too few magical workings which worked. From the time his ancestor had brought the company into existence and many times over the decades, one circuit, one component, one item at a time, House Chrysanthemum was changing that. No doubt, sensor devices produced by subsidiaries of his company had been used in the medical examination his wife had just been through, as well as the plebian operations of several other unicorn workings in place around the medical office.

The leading edge of science was sharp, cut deep, and left behind mangled bodies. House Chrysanthemum, and therefore Martel, had been devoted to avoiding those cuts. Over the last year, he had felt himself dragged closer to that razor edge with every doctor’s visit, every bottle of precisely measured chemical formula, every emergency stay in the hospital. He had never felt that keen cutting edge as much as when the otherwise pleasant doctor reached down and picked up a smiling Green Grass in his pale magic.

Instead of complaining, Martel merely stood back and watched Doctor Gentle prod and poke at his son with much the same care as his name. Greenie even enjoyed it, and reached with eager little hooves for the glittering end of the stethoscope whenever it dangled near. The examination took little time, ending when the doctor reluctantly gave Green Grass back to his mother, where he curled up and promptly fell asleep against her chest, most likely exhausted into a welcome nap by all the activity.

There were more small words as the nurse left, and the doctor made himself comfortable behind the desk, a large oak structure which had pictures of another stallion’s wife on it, reminding Martel that Gentle Arrival was only borrowing this doctor’s office for his temporary use.

“I’m afraid you already know what I’m going to say.” Doctor Gentle touched the tips of his forehooves together, tented above the massive desk’s thick surface. “Your wife does not have the thaumic reserves to carry two foals to term. It is not the same problem that she had with your son, or I would be able to help.”

“So that’s it, then.” Martel let out a breath he had not been aware he was holding as one of the two props that were holding up his world collapsed. “You were our last hope for the twins. We had heard so many good things about your work with prenatal thaumic potential that we had to try before we went through with a reduction.” He swallowed the bile that wanted to crawl up his throat. “One must die so the other will live.”

“That’s… yes,” admitted the doctor after a period of silence, obviously uncomfortable with the harsh words. “If you wish, I can provide references to an excellent surgeon who has dealt with the procedure before, with remarkable success rates.”

“And yet, one always dies,” murmured Martel beneath his breath. “That’s not all we wished to discuss with you, Doctor Gentle,” he added in a stronger voice that still felt bitter on his lips. “My wife and I have already discussed this at length. We had hoped you would be able to save both of the twins, but…”

The words did not want to come out of his reluctant mouth, much like a malfunctioning device that refused to perform its proper function. He, at least, was able to try, although Spring Fresh bent her head over Green Grass and bent to her task of teasing another bottle into his mouth with singular attention. In a relatively short time, the doctor filled the silence with his own words instead.

The tips of Doctor Gentle’s hooves tapped together once, then again. “Your wife is too old to have her essence manipulated,” he stated more slowly. “There is no way to save both of the twins and your wife. Her body has already been pressed to the limit. If left in place, the developing embryos will stress her organs until they fail, long before the foals are viable outside the womb. If she were weaker, the only practical option would be to remove them both and tie her tubes so she would not be able to bear any more foals. The safe approach for her condition at this time is a reduction. Remove one of the embryos, allow the other to develop, and deliver a healthy foal in six months.”

“We know.” Martel allowed the breath he had been holding to escape in a near hiss. “If there were a chance you could do whatever you do to adults, you would. I know your kind. Always asking if something is possible, instead of asking if it should even be attempted. In my business, that attitude kills. And yet…”

He forced himself to take a breath, to damp down the flickering embers of anger that simmered in his gut. “The First Law of Thaumics says magic can neither be created nor destroyed. While others secretly marveled at your ability to restore essence to the foals in troubled births, I could not help but wonder where you found it. At that time, I did not care, not even after the birth of my son. I found myself too busy exploring the world of thaumic nutrition, finding which ninety-nine of a hundred potions or elixirs were useless, which of them solved one problem while creating three more. Scam artists claiming to enhance magical talent, ancient herbs with inconsistent results, powdered gemstones and dangerous amulets.”

Still wrapped in his mother’s arms, Green Grass stirred, and Spring managed to slip the tip of a fresh bottle in between his lips.

“I’m aware of your recent work,” said Doctor Gentle. “That is why I agreed to meet with you today. I still don’t see why you need my services. The reduction is well outside of my regular practice.”

“I want you to save my son,” managed Martel from between clenched teeth. “Use whatever spell you use. Restore his essence from another. Save him. I don’t care how you normally acquire the essence you use, whether you dig up graveyards or rob indigents in the alleys of slums, but one of the twins my wife carries should have the essence you need for this. Take the life of one of my children to save the other.”

The doctor stopped tapping his forehooves together and leaned forward in his chair, nearly climbing onto the desktop as he spluttered, “That’s not how… Why do you think… It doesn’t work that way!”

“No. I don’t know what process or spell you wanted to use on Green Grass during his delivery, and I don’t want to know.” Martel continued with growing fury. “Whatever you do with the essence of an unborn foal with his disorder… Nopony I’ve met in the medical field wants to say anything about it, and I knew better than to prod too deeply. I don’t care. You can. That is a fact. In my business, I deal with facts, not wishes.”

Doctor Gentle did not say anything, but remained leaning over the desk with his face a mix of confusion and indignation.

“Embryos suffering from Pollychan’s Disorder exhibit symptoms on a spectrum,” continued Martel in words that he had practiced since the birth of his son. “Some cases are just barely detectable, while others kill well before the foal is born. My son is—”

“There are at least seven different names for the disease, all with the same symptoms. All with the same outcome.” Although recovered enough to speak, Doctor Gentle seemed pained beyond his words. “So many of them I could not save. I wish I had been available when your son was born. I thought he was lost forever. Some of the treatments you have used to prolong his life were my own, or those of my compatriots. They helped, and I hoped I was wrong, but after my examination today, I fear the outcome is inevitable. I cannot offer the hope you want.”

“You won’t even try,” growled Martel. There was a hesitation in the doctor’s impassive demeanor, much like Martel had seen in high-stakes business negotiations with far more dangerous individuals, and he pounced on it like a griffon on a fat rat. “You’re afraid. All stuffed full of your reputation and praise from parents who you’ve helped. You can face a mare with that smug doctor face and tell them how you did everything possible to save their dead foal, but you can’t look your failure in the face. Look at him! Look at my son!”

Green Grass took that moment to roll over and nuzzle away the bottle’s nipple, looking up at his father with those indescribable sunken eyes. Lowering his voice to a bare whisper, Martel continued, “He trusts us. Every shot, every needle, every time somepony has drawn blood or given him medicine, he takes. He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t struggle. He takes what the world has given him and just keeps going. That’s the kind of persistence that makes a Chrysanthemum. Look him in the eyes and tell him you won’t save his life.”

“No.” The doctor’s simple answer did not make Martel as angry as he expected. The word did not seem to be malicious, just something that bent his trust in directions he did not like. Worse, there was something darker in his tone, as if Martel had struck a flaw in his crystalline doctorial mask. It showed a level of determination that Gentle’s pleasant demeanor and sterling reputation had concealed, a scalpel blade held in reserve for more difficult tasks.

The doctor settled back into his chair and kept his eyes focused on the surface of the wooden desk. “Baron Chrysanthemum, you don’t know what I’ve gone through to reach this point. The risks I’ve taken. The failures. Even some of the successes which turned out to be less of a success than we originally thought.”

“The only way to succeed is to try,” countered Martel. “Failure is easy. All you have to do to guarantee failure is to give up. Life is hard.” The resulting silence draped across the room like a humid blanket until Martel was forced to speak again, nearly biting off the words. “The great doctor, who we heard so much about, gives us the same answer as all the rest. What good are you, then? What would you say if Green Grass was your own son?”

There was a distinctive twitch to Gentle’s coat at that, and Martel concealed a grim smile beneath the expression he had used against many, many business rivals, some of whom had been griffons. Weakness was to be exploited, and this was far more important than any business dealing he had ever negotiated before.

Curling his lip back, Martel snarled, “What lengths would you go to, what would you dare in order to give your own child a chance at life?”

Ever so slowly, in a motion that could have been chiseled out of marble, the doctor nodded. “I understand far more than you realize. Every patient I’ve treated, every foal who has been brought back from the shadowlands, they all hold a special place in my heart. I have not one child, but dozens.”

“And I have four.” Despite his attempt at maintaining an unyielding front, Martel found himself running one hoof gently down his wife’s mane. “What kind of father would I be to cast away one of them to save another? And yet I must, even before their birth. The doctors all say Green Grass will die,” he said flatly, spitting the words out as if they were bile. “They said it during his birth, and they’ve said it every time I meet with one since. The only doctor who said anything else is you, and now we are supposed to ignore even that thread of hope?”

“Hope is one thing,” said Doctor Gentle. “Wishing for something that cannot be is another.”

“Again, I don’t care!” snapped Martel. Fighting to hold his voice steady and his temper in check, he growled, “You, and only you, can take the life from one of my unborn children, and give it to my son. Kill the one, save the other, through whatever secret process you have discovered. I’ve heard stories about you doing this before and I have no reason to doubt your reputation.”

The doctor settled back into his chair and his uncomfortable expression turned grim. “So it has come to this. Blackmail.”

“No.” Martel took a difficult breath and rested one hoof on his wife’s shoulder, which was tense as a coiled spring. “Never. I will not cross that line, and neither will my wife. We are honorable ponies. As I said, we have discussed this at length. What we have spoken of shall remain strictly within this room, no matter the decision. Even if you refuse to help, and my son…”

Doctor Gentle thought for a time while Martel kept his face impassive. He did not like being played like a fool, particularly with the life of his wife and son at stake. The advantage of being deeply involved in the business world was a lifetime of facing talented liars, each willing to spin or warp their words into pretzels to gain advantage over their opponents.

The respected doctor had a way of speaking too familiar to Martel. Many of the ponies he faced daily used cautious phrases and subtle dances of meaning far beyond their words. It itched at his mind and bothered his business sense. Far better would be some sort of agreement with all the conditions laid out in detailed paragraphs, agreed to by both parties and enforceable by law. He knew medicine did not work that way, but could not help but wish it did. Holding his tongue until the doctor had finished was the most difficult thing he had done in his life, short of keeping his voice calm and level to this point instead of screaming in the way he would much prefer.

The doctor took up a piece of loose paper on the desk and began folding it with his hooves, a very earth pony habit that Martel had not expected. Still, it was another chink in the dam, a weakness that Martel was determined to continue exploiting if it would save his son. Spring made as if she wanted to fill that hollow silence, but Martel stopped her with a glance, and she went back to the slow and reluctant feeding of Green Grass. Eventually, the resulting paper crane was placed upon the desk, and the doctor let out his breath in a long, deep acknowledgement of defeat. “Yes. I will try.”

“That is all I can ask,” admitted Martel. “Whatever you need, be it funding or access to any of my company, it is yours.”

“I will prepare a list. Arrangements will need to be made. Quickly.” The doctor touched the paper crane, making it rock back and forth. “I hope we both do not eventually regret this decision.”

“The three of us,” admitted Martel. He brushed a hoof against his wife’s shoulder, a bare touch which scarcely stirred her yellow coat. “My son will live. I will have it no other way.”

“Which son?” asked Doctor Gentle very quietly. He picked up a second piece of loose paper from the desk and began folding. “The unborn foals are fraternal unicorns, one male and one female, with two distinct placentas or a reduction would be nearly impossible. You can still have a son, even if Green Grass passes away.”

Martel could not breathe. It was a temptation beyond all others. A unicorn son to carry on the family business. His first son was already promised to another family, a union between unicorn Houses that was needed to maintain the constant tenuous grasp of power. His second son was a frivolous child who was fascinated by the intricate dance of language and had no interest in magic. The tension only grew while the doctor continued to fold, eventually placing a second paper swan next to the first.

“Mama?” The bottle’s nipple had slipped out of the infant’s mouth, and he pawed ineffectually at it to encourage its return. Spring Fresh quickly returned the nipple to Green Grass’ lips, although she trembled when Martel rested a hoof on her shoulder. There was a possibility Martel had not really wanted to consider over the last few months, one that made it more difficult to breathe than ever.

One that he dared not speak, even to himself.

“We should leave,” said Martel bluntly, despite the way Spring looked up from her wheelchair with wide eyes at his words. “If I had the smallest amount of sense, I would take my wife and child far away from you. But…”

The doctor started to speak, then thought better of it, although he never took those eyes off him.

“Take the colt,” managed Martel. “Let my unborn son save my son who is born.”

“And if I fail?” asked Doctor Gentle.

“You will not.” Martel reached down and arranged the knit cap over his son’s hornless head, then gently tousled his exposed mane. “You will succeed, and my son will live. I will consider nothing else.”

2. The Life We Make

So The Other May Live
The Life We Make

Hospitals still gave Martel a cutting sensation deep in his gut, places of death where he had watched his own grandfather die, and then his father. His own near-miss had been only a few months ago, a tightness in the chest that had been examined and pondered by several wise minds with concerned expressions and formal lab coats before being passed off as perhaps a ‘minor’ heart attack, much as one might consider having a boulder dropped on your head a minor mountain attack.

Pills every morning. Pills every evening. Pills he had to surreptitiously carry in a small pocket sewn into his suit jacket, just in case.

Thankfully, Green Grass no longer needed pills of any sort. He ate like he had been starved for his first moons of life, and could wheedle the nurse into extra applesauce or bits of banana with one plaintive look from his deep blue eyes. The burning curiosity of his previous existence also grew, until Martel had to bring an earth pony locksmith into the house in order to get every openable door or cabinet a proper latch.

Today, he was exercising his curiosity on an entirely new and different thing.

With great effort, the little colt had pushed a chair in the waiting room up next to the window, then managed to climb up it so he could see into the room beyond. There were a half-dozen cribs filled with infants all wrapped up in colorful blankets and poking their noses into the world, and one in particular that Martel could not keep from looking at.

“Sister,” said Green Grass quite plainly, leaning up against the window with his hooves awkwardly braced to either side of the slippery glass.

“Sister,” confirmed Martel. He rested a hoof gently on Green Grass’ knit cap, which the child still refused to take off for any reason, and added, “Brother.”

“Brthr,” managed the little colt, who likewise did not take his eyes off the snow-white tuft of mane that stuck out of the nearby crib. “Mama?”

“Your mother is fine,” said Martel again, just as he had every time Green Grass asked. The words were not really for the benefit of his son, but for himself. Mere words could not encompass his own situation.

And yet… Whenever Martel felt his ire rising, he could not help but put himself into her shoes. He was not the young stallion he once was, newly thrust into the company with a wife just as bruskly assigned to him by their families. There had been no time for what might have passed for love during those years. There was responsibility, and duty, and two awkward young ponies trying to figure out what parts fit where in their lives, as well as the bedroom. And then there were three, a small one who cried and pooped and left them both in tears at night for no reason at all. An organic machine with no operating manual and no sense of timing, who they had both made with their fumbling and forced togetherness. Then there was another, a filly who could twist her father’s heart into a high-tensile spring with a single glance, and then another son, who might as well not have had a horn for as much as he cared to experiment with noises instead. He tooted, and whistled, and chirped, and made all the griffon customers clutch their hearts with cuteness, bright enough to speak their language practically before his own.

And then came Green Grass. The strangeness of Spring’s pregnancy. The diagnosis. The months of constant worry. The birth where both mother and foal were nearly lost. Endless trips to the brink of medical disaster with their tiny offspring, and his wife huddled by his side. Martel thought he needed to be strong for his son, but even though he refused to admit it out loud, he knew his wife needed his support just as much. She would have heard of the mythical doctor when he did, since they had been nearly inseparable during Greenie’s constant travails, from pre- to post-partum. Would she have leapt to the same conclusion as he did? That the doctor needed a sacrifice to save the life of a troubled foal? And could she have endangered her own life in such a reckless fashion to provide—

“Ah, they told me you were in here.” Doctor Gentle Arrival swept into the observation room, not quite as filled with energy as the first time Martel had seen him, but still making good speed for as rumpled and fatigued as he seemed. “I just finished up with with a pegasus patient, and thought I’d stop by and congratulate you on the birth of your daughter, since I have a few minutes in my schedule.”

“And to examine my son again,” said Martel, who had barely acknowledged the older stallion’s presence while he regained his composure.

He knew this moment would inevitably arrive. All the practice into what he was going to say to the doctor, all the words laid out neat array. The preparation would be disastrous if Martel lost control, just as if he were concentrating on creating a unicorn working and lost his focus. A physician would be able to read him like a book if he let his emotions through to the surface. He needed to be the steel. Unbroken. Unyielding.

“Well… as long as we both are here, it will save you a trip,” admitted the doctor. He boosted Green Grass up in his colorless magical field and began to go through the motions of a regular examination.

Martel held his tongue until the last poke and prod was complete, and the doctor sat Greenie back down in the chair. Only then did he hazard a few words, picked carefully from months of consideration.

“I was wrong.”

“Well, not as wrong as you could have been,” said the doctor, bending down to pack his instruments back into his little black bag with Greenie right there, trying to poke his tiny nose into to see what all the sparkling things were. “I’ll admit, the procedure was far more difficult than even I expected, but I never could have done it without your son’s resilience. I nearly lost him more than once.” The doctor took a breath with the bag half-closed. “Myself, as well. If I had known the risks going in, I never would have attempted the procedure. In hindsight, it was foolish of me, but it paid off.”

It was a lie. It could only be a lie. There were few ponies who could pass a lie off as truth under Martel’s experienced eye, and the doctor most certainly believed he was one of that small, select group. Oh, most of what he was saying was certainly the truth. Martel had met with the doctor after Green Grass’ procedure, if only briefly. It had been a chilling sight to see the cocksure physician brought to such a level of crushing fatigue. Far different than the doctor’s cheerful demeanor now, after what must have been one of his usual procedures with the troubled foal he mentioned. But there was a sense of triumph in Gentle’s voice when he reminisced, and Martel knew beyond a doubt that his son would not be the last to undergo such a dangerous process.

Or as a chill ran up Martel’s spine, perhaps his son had not been the first.

Green Grass gave out a little disappointed squeak when the doctor closed his bag and latched the magical hasp, although Doctor Gentle remained kneeling to run one hoof through the little colt’s mane and pat him on the head where a horn should have been. “One of my most unlikely yet successful procedures, I believe. After the procedure, I had not expected his essence to be so pure for his tribe, even though it is near the bottom of the normal thaumic range. As an earth pony with that level of magic, it’s doubtful that he’s ever going to master the Cornucopia effect, but he should have a normal life anyway. He probably won’t even require supplemental nutrition.”

“When Green Grass was born, I was expected…” After all of the effort Martel had placed into building an inviolate wall across his emotions, he could feel the cracks begin already. “Our family is pure,” he managed. “No worse lie. Nopony is pure. My family was certainly not pure. There are a dozen earth ponies in my family tree, perhaps more. Our roots go deep, and I had grown blind to what other families had done for their vaunted purity,” he nearly spat.

“During the tests which my wife endured before his birth, we discovered his tribe. From there, the whispers began. How much easier it would be if he were just… lost. Why would we struggle to bring one of them into this world? I had to wonder if any of their families had made that terrible decision. To cast aside what they labored for, much as pure unicorn families had done in darker times.

“Even after his birth, one of the doctors told us to take him outside and bury him,” stated Martel bluntly. “Struggling for life, with needles and tubes in our child, and he wanted to bury him.” Martel took a deep breath to quash the snarling fury that itched to emerge. “I quite nearly struck him. Only later did I realize he was an earth pony, and maybe…”

The silence stretched long and cool in the office until Doctor Gentle admitted, “It is a legitimate custom among some of their tribes.” He continued to stroke Green Grass’ mane, seemingly unperturbed by the revelation. “Pegasi wash their newborn in fresh snowmelt, after all.”

Leaving Green Grass on the floor to gnaw ineffectually at the locked bag, Doctor Gentle stood up and looked Martel right in the eyes. “You did the right thing when you shamed me into performing the procedure. Never apologize for saving a life. If I ever have children of my own, I hope that I will be just as strident in their defense.”

“I was not wrong for doing that,” said Martel, trying to maintain eye contact. “Several months ago, I blamed you for something you did not do.”

“My procedures are moral,” he responded, only to have Martel wave away his objection.

“I don’t care to know about your precious procedures.” Martel took a short, hesitant breath. “I was desperate, and would have done anything to save my son, moral or not. I have never been driven to that edge before. You did not push me there. I pushed myself. And I may…”

Returning his tired gaze to the room beyond the window, full of cribs containing the hopes and dreams of their parents, Martel pressed forward. “After Green Grass’ birth, we were not going to have any more foals. The risk was too great. My wife had a contraceptive spell placed on her, one of the more reliable spells which we expected to last until either of us could have surgery. With all the turmoil of our lives, the more permanent option was delayed, and postponed, until—” He swallowed and gestured at the tiny fluff of pure-white mane that stuck out of a nearby crib labeled “FROST CHANDLER.”

“And you thought…” started Doctor Gentle, only to have Martel interrupt again. The words were bitter enough without having some other pony speak them.

“You? At first. There was another possibility. The longer I thought, the less likely it seemed. We already had two healthy colts and a filly. What motive would she have? She knew nothing of your procedure before the birth of our son, so she could not possibly have considered the situation we found ourselves in. But who could be so malicious, so cruel as to cast a fertility spell on a mare who already had such severe issues with a birth? The resulting pregnancy would be sure to have even more severe issues. Issues that only one pony in all of Equestria could possibly want. Or so I thought at the time.

“So I pulled strings, begged some very powerful ponies, and managed to wrangle an analyzer for one day. Tricky piece of equipment, very rare. There’s only three of them in Equestria, total, as I’m sure you know. I had to work in some of the company’s backlogged plans we never had time or money to do as an excuse, paid a mountain of bits in fees, then more bits in bribes to keep the operator’s mouth shut. Then I had to lie to my wife. Believe me, that was the hardest. In the end, the results were about as solid as thaumic analysis goes. Somepony, the same unicorn mare in fact, had broken her protective spell and put a fertility spell on her.”

The silence was crushing. Martel rested his head against the window and breathed in and out through his teeth until the doctor spoke.

“I understand far more than you know. I’ve seen the way mothers look at me. Green Grass is your son, but he will always be a part of her flesh. Mother and child have a bond that stallions can never experience. To lose a part of themselves in that way…” Now it was the doctor’s turn to take a long, slow breath, and he moved up beside Martel to look through the window as well. “I’ve made it my life’s work to prevent that pain,” he continued. “There is a great work which—”

“No,” said Martel flatly. He took a long look at his daughter, a fluffy unicorn as brilliantly white as new-fallen snow, who wriggled in her sleep beyond the glass. “I have my wife, who I trust. My son, who I nearly lost. And a new foal. For all of that, I am grateful beyond words. I am too close to even think about participating in this ‘great work’ which your supporters seem so excited about. My other son. Her twin. He was taken. For that, I can never forgive what you have done, no matter what the result. No matter that I begged you, pleaded with you.”

“Your wife could not have survived until birth with both embryos,” said Doctor Gentle, who still had not moved from the window.

“Perhaps not. Or perhaps. Did you wonder how my wife held up so well under this pregnancy while Green Grass gave her such issues?”

The mention of his name made the curious little foal on the floor look up from where he had been attempting to break into the doctor’s black bag. Despite the unicorn workings holding it closed, he had given it a good try, and the handle was slick with saliva from his ineffectual chewing.

“A promising new product which combines nutritional and thaumic reinforcement,” continued Martel. “Sold by a small company with no financing, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Few pregnant mares need that kind of support, even fewer could afford their product at the prices they needed to charge to remain profitable. Many of the ones who would need it, don’t know until it is too late.”

“You purchased the supplement for your wife?” asked the doctor.

“I purchased the company,” said Martel. “Unfortunately, we did not discover the product until after the procedure, by which time it was too late to save my son.”

“I did save your son,” insisted the doctor.

“I know.” Martel heaved a brief sigh. “There is only so much the supplement could do. It never would have been able to save Green Grass’ life. He would have died without your procedure. For that, you have my eternal thanks. But my other son…”

There was a clattering noise from underhoof as Green Grass headed off in the direction of the chairs in the back of the room, seeking some sort of childish entertainment among their shadowed recesses and rows of chair legs. Despite his youngest surviving son’s obvious sounds of joyous exploration, Martel could not look away from the room full of cribs and all of the innocent foals inside. Their reflections in the glass showed over Frost’s sleeping form, as if two ghostly protectors were keeping watch throughout her slumber, one specter large and somber, the other smaller with his face fixed in a mixture of sorrow and stoic determination.

“I will support you,” Martel said after a time. “My company has resources which you will find quite useful. I will even permit you to periodically examine Green Grass to see how he is developing. But I will never see you again. I will not talk with you, or work directly with you for any reason under Sun or Moon. Every time I see your face, I will be reminded of my unborn son. It is not your fault. It is just the way things are.”

The doctor nodded. “I understand. Will you be keeping the supplement company open?”

“Yes. Not everypony will benefit, of course.” He heaved a short, labored breath. “After all, Pollychan’s Disorder displays symptoms in a spectrum depending on how much essence flow blockage there is from mother to foal during development. Foals with resulting weak essences may require daily supplements for their entire lives, while those with flaws too deep will still require your services.”

After a few silent moments broken only by the thump and clunk of Green Grass playing among the chairs, the doctor stated, “There are those who would use such a product to squeeze every bit they can get out of desperate parents.”

“Yes.” Martel touched one hoof against the glass with a quiet click. “That is why I will continue to control the company. I suspect it will run at a net loss until I pass into the shadowlands, but I don’t care. It will save lives.”

“That is what we all intend,” said Doctor Gentle.

“Each in our own way,” said Martel. “Goodby.”

Martel made no effort to see the doctor off when he began to pick up his things and prepare to leave. It was far easier just to keep looking at his newest daughter through the window and try his best not to think. The faint click of the closing door threatened to unleash the floodgates of his pent-up rage and frustration, but he thought of the pills in his coat pocket and his helpless wife until calm once again filled his mind. Throwing a fit would not be productive. It would be a childish exercise in futility, and stood a possibility of triggering yet another heart attack.

Lies.

There are some doors that should remain closed, some secrets that deserve to remain forever hidden from Moon and Sun. As a father, he wanted to know what had happened with his wife’s pregnancy. That had only revealed another door which he was determined to keep closed, at all costs.

As an entrepreneur, Martel wanted to know what Doctor Gentle Arrival had done with his son. Sons.

As a father, he forced himself to remain ignorant.

Life. The chain of life. From father to son to grandson and beyond. There were always broken links in that chain, and worse, males could only play a supporting role. Mares were the ponies who bore the terrible weight of every link, ensuring life and families would continue instead of dwindling to a halt.

Spring had held Green Grass in her belly for months, endured the resulting risk without complaint, remained silent when other families ‘implied’ it would be better for everypony if he were simply discarded like some sort of messy trash. Much like her husband, Spring Fresh was a stubborn pony, and to attempt to change her mind was an exercise in growing frustration. How deep had those supposedly ‘kind’ words from other unicorn mothers cut into her own motherhood? What kind of commitment had she gone through in order to deliberately break the contraception spell on her own body, then use a fertility spell, a working that had its own substantial risks?

Or worse, had she done it for him, out of some misguided drive of a subordinate to satisfy her husband’s desire for an heir to the company? If so, she had severely misunderstood him, much like he had underestimated her.

Spring was anything but subordinate to his will. Theirs was a marriage of equals, with each taking their own roles where they were strongest, and stepping back where they were weak. That was why he spoke with Doctor Gentle Arrival on her behalf, and why he had bent to her request to purchase the supplement company, so fewer mares would have to suffer as she had. He owned that tiny company now, but she ran it, and the decisions she made were final. He may have been the expert at unicorn workings and all things mechanical, but Spring had motivated the scientists at the supplement company into action when their morale had been lowest, and they practically worshipped her every move from then on.

Actions and reaction. They were an integral part of creating unicorn workings, and applied as much to the magic as to the ponies involved. The same instincts that could drive a device experimenter to dive for cover moments before the experiment blew to bits also worked for seeing the tiny twitches in a pony’s coat or the way they would shift their eyes while talking. And Martel was extremely good at experimentation. Where to poke, where to pull, how much stress a component could take, what effect happened when certain criteria were established. How he could be so aware of others and their reactions and still so blind to the mare that he shared his life with…

It deserved thought, although while he stood there in the darkened room, looking at his daughter while listening to his son thump and bump through the chairs behind him, those thoughts were difficult to capture.

Still, time passed despite his wishes, and Martel tore himself away from the enticing vision of watching Frost sleep. Flowers. Mares appreciated flowers. It had been so long since he had given his wife roses that he could not remember what kind she liked. Perhaps a dozen of each variety, an extravagant display of love and appreciation for the words he had never said and could not say out loud. Admittedly, that would be a small thing compared to the gifts she had given him from her own body, but one has to start somewhere.

“Son, it’s time to go,” he called out. “We want to give your mother a hug before we go home for the night, don’t you?”

The clattering among the folding chairs grew more intense and Green Grass emerged, covered with dust and trailing cobwebs, but no worse for wear. He galloped over to the stroller, giving it a firm butt with his head and making it shift positions.

“Sitr,” he declared before rearing up in front of the foal compartment and spitting out what he had been carrying in his mouth. “Sister,” he repeated, much more intelligibly.

“You scamp,” said Martel, stifling a laugh. He brushed off the cobwebs, scooped his son up in his magic, and tucked him into the foal’s compartment on the stroller, removing the item which Green Grass had put inside.

It was a stethoscope, which struck Martel as odd that one of the doctors would leave such a valuable piece of medical equipment behind the chairs in the pediatric observation room. For a moment, he thought it looked suspiciously like the stethoscope that Doctor Gentle had tucked into his little black bag, but that was highly unlikely. His bag had been closed and locked with unicorn wards. Far more likely some medical student had just dropped the expensive tool, and Green Grass seemed to enjoy it, so Martel slipped it into the foal’s bag on the back of the stroller and proceeded on their way to the hospital florist.

There was much still left to be done for his family.