It was night on the planet below. Their world obeyed different rules than the one Spike had arisen from, and did not require continuous effort to constantly control the motion of celestial bodies. His world no longer had night, or ever truly had day. The magic that was required to raise the sun and moon had long since departed, funneled instead into the Alicorn and to the works of the Icon of Magic. The familiar the sun had grown alien and perpetually glowed dim scarlet on the horizon beyond the black clouds of dust and ash, unable to ever truly rise or set.

Perhaps, if he had been down there, Spike would have slept, looking up at the starry sky he could only recall from his most distant memories. From high above, though, as he looked down on the darkness and spreading fires of his own creation, he instead busied himself with the task at hand.

Behind him, Shining floated in his tube, his eye half closed—until it suddenly blinked and focused, his mind having surfaced from whatever comatose madness he existed in when his attention was fully devoted to the function of his surrogate body. His dreams, if they could be called that, had been cooped by the machinery, and he took whatever opportunity he could to avoid the sick parody of sleep he was given.

“You should be sleeping,” he said.

“I have to oversee the distributions...the Proto-Vandraresent out airships. They’re diverting their forces away from their Island City, as we expected, but I need to balance everything so they don’t get suspicious...and now I have to get units out of Europe. France just invaded Germany. Might as well let them go to work...” He rubbed his face. He was tired. It felt as though he could sleep for a thousand years. Disturbingly, he was aware that he, as a dragon, was physically capable of doing just that. What the world would look like when he awoke, though, terrified him to the core.

“You were talking to Fleur.”

Spike did not answer, but instead went back to his work.

“I never took you for a necrophiliac, Spike.”

Spike stopped. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Wasn’t what?”

Spike turned slowly, glaring at the illuminated tube behind him. Shining Armor stared back with his one remaining eye, almost defiantly.

“You approved her for this mission. You signed the paperwork. It was you. Wasn’t it?”

“Of course it was me. Did it really take you that long to figure out? There’s only three of us that have that authority, and you’re one of them. And at this point Twilight can’t stay conscious for more than a few minutes a week.”

“You’re my brother. Why would you do that to me?”

“You? Spike, don’t be dense. You didn’t even factor into the decision.”

“Great. How comforting.”

Shining sighed. “She needs this. You know that.”

“For what?” snapped Spike. “Revenge? How? Why? Where does that even fit into this? What’s even the point?” He gestured to the planet. “This is war.” He paused. “No. It isn’t even that. Not anymore. Vengeance doesn’t do a dang thing. We keep emotions out of this. We have to--”

“Did that dragon evolution thing give you a thicker skull?”

“Excuse me?”

“Revenge? Really? Spike, this isn’t a Power Ponies comic book. Nopony cares about revenge, especially not her.”

“Then what?”

“What? Spike, you know what happened to her. You saw it.”

“She doesn’t look much different to me than you do.”

“Then you’re an idiot too, because there’s a big difference. I’m still alive. That’s kind of the point. This isn’t about getting ‘revenge’, it’s about leaving a job unfinished.”

“You’ve said a lot of stupid things in your life, Shining, but that takes the cake--”

“Just listen to me. I’m older than you.”

“By, like, fifteen years.”

“That’s enough. Listen. Do you know how she died?”

Spike tensed. “N…no.”

“I do. I read the reports. The reports she submitted. After her own death. She was in a tripod in a Celestia-forsaken place called Leeds on some pointless waterlogged island. She had just extracted an adult female and an adult male, and was about to process their son when the Germ hit her. Have you seen what it does to a pony?”

“No.”

“Consider yourself lucky. They go fast. And there is pain. A lot of it. And so much blood.”

“Please. I don’t want to think about her going through that.”

“But she did. It burned out her motor cortex before she could fire the trigger. She killed a kid's parents, but didn’t finish the job. Left him alive.”

Spike felt his stomach sink. “And the…‘kid’?”

“How should I know? There were no survivors. But knowing how Proto-Vandrare react to stress, he was probably eaten by roving bands of cannibals. Or, if he did survive, he would be so psychologically damaged that he would never amount to anything useful.” He paused. “Or he could rise to a level of power and depravity that makes Hitler look like Fluttershy.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“To make a point. She didn’t finish the job. And neither did we. We left the planet halfway. She won’t be happy until this is all finished. Until we have the Milk. Until that kid, if he’s still alive, is fed to my sister.”

Spike paused for what felt like hours. “I didn’t want to know any of that. You’re just making the job harder.”

“Then why are you even here, Spike?” snapped Shining Armor, growing increasingly exasperated.

“To do my job, same as you--”

“No. No, you’re not, and you can’t be. Maybe that’s it. You can’t know what it feels like. To be like her. Or me. You just can’t.”

“Because Twilight is your sister? You know what she means to me--”

“Forget Twilight! We’re all doing this for Twilight, and for Equestria. To keep us alive. No matter what it takes. But what we’re doing? How we’re doing it? These are terrible things. Horrible things. They make me sick to the stomach I don’t even have anymore. And sure, you can pretend we’re not. It’s fine up here, isn’t it, when it’s just a ball of water and green. But deep down, you know what we’re doing. You know it’s wrong, but you know we have to do it anyway. Because as wrong as it is, it’s necessary.”

“Again. Not making this any easier.”

“But that’s the thing. You’re not really part of it, are you? You could walk away. Whenever you want.”

Spike scowled, bearing his teeth. “I would never--”

“But you could. The rest of us? Me, Fleur, Twilight, all our friends? We can’t. I can’t. We’re connected to the Alicorn, and the Alicorn needs Milk. Without it, we all die. Permanently. We have to do it. But you don’t. You can survive Equestria, heck, it makes you stronger. If we all die, you’re still here.”

Spike took several long steps toward the glass, but Shining Armor did not break eye contact.

“Exactly,” he said, quietly. “If you all die, I’m still here.”

Shining Armor paused, monumentally holding eye contact, but then was forced to avert his gaze.

“I’m a dragon,” continued Spike. “On some level, my brain is wired for violence. Cruelty, maybe. But that’s not me. But it’s a part of me, I guess. And I can hide in there if I need to.” He paused. “But you. You’re a pony. How do you do it, Shining? What keeps you going?”

Shining Armor paused, his lungs repeatedly inflating and deflating, filled by mechanical pumps somewhere below the deck of the bridge. Then he looked up once more.

“You know what I’m fighting for, Spike.”

His horn lit, casting a vague blue fog in the antibiotic fluid in which he was suspended, the glow shining bright from the slowly-propagating cracks that had formed over constant years of extended use. His eye went distant, and the room fell silent—and Spike saw them. The holograms, emerging from the holographic mist of Shining Armor’s memory, their bodies faded and grainy as the ancient memories began to decay. Shining Armor was not a dragon. He could not remember so far—and even this memory, his most precious, was slowly dying.

To figures stepped out of the ether, their bodies translucent and monochrome in Shining Armor’s flickering blue light. Two alicorns. Two fifths of the Alicorn. One tall and thin, and the other much younger, looking so much like a smaller version of her mother—and the spectre of Cadence paused, smiling lovingly at her husband, who stared back from his tank, his one eye wide as he stared at her, his exposed heart beating ever more quickly.

“They’re not dead,” he said, quietly. “They’re still alive. Still doing their part, just like we are here...but they’re not dead.”

Spike shivered. “I know.”

“But you have no idea how close we are. Just a little more Milk. A little more power. Just a little more, and they can come back. They can all come back. Because of them, and Twilight...”

A third specter emerged from his memory. One of his sister, of Twilight, and Spike needed to look away. He could not bear to see her whole when he knew what she had been forced to become.

“Just a little more. That’s all we need. The dead? They’ll come back. And us? Me? I won’t be like this anymore. I’ll be able to see them. I'll be able to hug my daughter again...I’ll have my family back, Spike, if we can just get a little more...”

A hologram emerged from the opposite side. Of Shining Armor. What he had looked like before the surgeries. Young and strong, with the body of a pony instead of the limitless mechanical factory that had been grafted to his marginally-alive remains in the name of Milk.

“No,” whispered Spike. “Shining, don’t do this to yourself...”

Shining Armor did not listen. His hologram joined the fading memory of his family. Flurry Heart jumped with joy and hugged him, and he rest his head against his tall wife’s shoulder. In his tank, though, Spike saw his eye wide—and saw the tears dripping from it, floating and diffusing in the fluid that kept him alive. He had of course seen them. The five unspeakable monstrosities grafted to Twilight’s pentagram, the lenses that kept her alive and conscious. He, like so few, understood the true nature of the Alicorn, and what it had cost.

Which answered Spike’s question. What kept him alive in that tank was hope.

“Shining. Shining!”

Shining armor did not respond. Spike stepped toward the tank, close enough to see the tattered ends of Shining’s cranial nerves drifting in his fluid. He watched as his friend—his adopted brother—wept quietly at the sight of what had once been, trapped in his own memories and the corrosive fallacy of his own hope for the future.

Spike raised a single sharpened claw and tapped on the glass. The faces of the memories contorted in horror as they disintegrated into sparkling magical dust, and every remaining muscle on Shining’s body tensed. His heart skipped a beat, and he blinked, confused.

“Spike! I told you! Don’t tap on the glass! Ever!”

“I need you to focus.”

“I am focused, I was just--”

“No. You weren't. You answered the question. But I’m still right. This isn’t the place for emotion. If you want to see them again, we need this planet’s Milk. And if we want to get it, we need to do our jobs.”

Shining’s forced breathing slowed. “Right...right. I’m sorry. I got...distracted.” He looked up. “But you never answered my question. Why do you do this, Spike?”

Spike shrugged. “It’s what I’ve always done. I don’t see any reason to stop now.”

“That isn’t a very good reason.”

Spike returned to his controls and to oversee the war on the planet below. He let out a long sigh.

“I know.”

Author's Note

Immortality is the only true end and, reflected back upon itself, provides the mechanism for the means in turn.