The New Normal

Two pink lines… Remedy stared in catatonic shock at the little test strip she'd stolen from the drug store on the way home. The sinking feeling in her gut was the only thing she could think or feel. Her eyes scoured the package once again, hoping that this time the instructions would change and she'd find that she'd just stupidly misinterpreted the test. No… Maybe the test was defective or she'd contaminated it somehow. It had to be a false positive. She couldn't be pregnant. The birth control…

"This is… impossible," she whimpered. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. "What do I do?" She couldn't fathom everything this meant but it was certain that her life as she knew it was coming to a screeching halt.

She couldn't self soothe; her mind was spiraling. She needed to tell mom or dad. They'd know what to do. They could help somehow. Dad… he'd be the father and great grandfather. She'd be the mom and sister. Knowing only where mom was, she teleported from the room with her horrid test and appeared in the conservatory where her mother laid on a triclinium, eating pastries and working on a crossword puzzle in the early evening light.

Flurry looked up to see her daughter with stinging red eyes and her face immediately fell in concern. She put her puzzle aside. "What's wrong, Remedy?"

"Mom, I really need to tell you something." She floated the positive test toward her. "I- I'm pregnant," she choked.

Flurry's eyes fell on the two parallel lines as she received the object with her own magic. "No way," she gasped "Just like… me." She looked back at Remedy, to truly gauge her reaction. Those definitely weren't tears of joy.

"How did this happen?" wailed Remedy. "I thought I was on the most effective oral contraceptive?"

Flurry gritted her teeth. "You were. That's what I gave you." She racked her brain in panic, thinking she must have screwed it up somehow like her dad did with her. It wasn't expired, she was sure of it. She bought a new batch specifically for Remedy. She drank the whole thing within the timeframe. They used it as directed. She couldn't figure it out but she also couldn't shake the feeling that she'd made a mistake.

Flurry shook her head sheepishly. "I don't know, sweetie. You know it's dad's, the foal?

"Yes… I'm so scared; I don't want to have a foal right now."

Flurry put her forelegs around her and clutched her tight. "That's exactly how I felt when it happened to me but then I had you." She smiled tentatively.

"I can't do this," cried Remedy, fresh tears gushing from her eyes. "I'm not ready. What about school?"

Flurry so wished that Remedy was excited about this so that she could also feel excited about it but instead she had to console her like her dad had just died and it was a real buzzkill.

Flurry stroked her daughter's mane to help calm her. "Honey, it'll be okay," She sighed. "Remedy, I wasn't going to tell this to anyone yet because I wanted it to be a surprise but… I'm pregnant too. Isn't that great?"

Remedy blinked in confusion as if her mother had just hoofed her a banana. "I- I guess."

The intimate and momentous revelation seemed less of a comfort and more of a temporary distraction from her daughter's personal apocalypse. None of this was going the way Flurry had hoped. "You'll get a new sister… well two new sisters now… I guess." She scratched her head. Was that correct? "We can be pregnant together at the same time. It'll be great. It won't be so scary."

"I regret everything," mumbled Remedy.

"Sweetie, it's going to be okay. I promise. I know it's a shock; I know you're young and it's hard but you're a princess who lives in a castle. We can get through this together. Remember, I know exactly how you feel."

For the moment, Remedy's tears seemed to have receded. Her breathing was also slowing back to normal.

"Go lay down in your room for a while. I'm going to talk to daddy, then I'll come check on you again. I'll get you some tea. It'll help calm you down. Would you like that?"

Remedy nodded listlessly into her mother's chest before releasing her and backing away.

Flurry blinked out of the conservatory and into Shining's study. The stallion didn't appear to be occupied with anything in particular except a tumbler of whiskey and a stack of official letters with broken wax seals.

He looked up from his desk and paused, expecting the intrusion to have an explanation.

"So dad," she began casually. If there were any good ways to break news like this, Flurry was not familiar with them. "Looks like you knocked up Remedy." She placed the test face up on his desk.

Shining's jaw dropped in initial surprise but she waited hopefully for perhaps a little smile. She was disappointed.

He turned to her looking like he'd been skewered through the mouth by an invisible spike. "You said you gave her birth control," he howled in dismay.

"I did," she flailed defensively. "I did everything by the book. It's not my first rodeo, dad. I don't know what happened."

"Did you talk to her?"

"Yes."

"How was she?"

Flurry frowned. "She… cried and was terrified," she admitted. "But it'll be okay, you know? Just like it was with me."

Shining buried his face in his hooves and shook his head. "Flurry, don't you get it? We really fucked up. This was never ever supposed to happen. We made a deal. We promised your mom. We told Remedy that she was safe. She trusted us and we failed her."

Flurry's face fell as she tried to come up with something helpful to add. She briefly entertained the idea of softening the blow by mentioning her own pregnancy but wasn't sure if he could handle two surprises in one sitting. Also, she didn't want to squander another announcement if she probably wasn't going to get the excited reactions she deserved.

"I- I didn't screw up," she breathed in uncertainty.

Shining downed the rest of his glass. "I did this to my own daughter… again," his voice cracked.

Flurry swallowed. "Uh… we'll talk about it more later. I said I'd check on her."

Shining watched her vanish in a flash. He clenched his eyes shut and let his head slump to the desk. It would be nice to be able to comfort her but how could he. Hadn't he interfered enough in her life? He wrenched the stopper out of the whiskey decanter and brought it straight to his lips. - - -

Two pink lines…

"Motherfucker," breathed Cadance as she paced around her room, floating the test idly in the air. She'd brought this on herself. She took out the ring and quite literally commanded him to put a foal in her.

There came a sudden burst of teleportation magic prompting her to reflexively hurl her pregnancy test across the bedroom.

Her eyes focused on the disturbance. "Re- Remedy? What is it?" She knew better than to just barge into someone's bedroom without even a knock. Something must have been wrong.

The distressed filly approached her. "Grandma… I'm pregnant."

"What?" she shrieked. "How do you know? You took a test?"

"Yes."

"Just now?

"Yes."

"Do you know who the father is?" As if there was any doubt.

"I've only had vaginal intercourse with one pony."

Cadance bit her lip in silent rage, nearly drawing blood but she took a deep breath and exhaled to calm herself down. She sat on her haunches and held out a hoof to her granddaughter. "Come here."

They wrapped their forelegs around each other. A hundred things stormed through Cadance's mind, the terror of repeating the cycle that screwed up her daughter, never being listened to, blind rage at the perpetrators, the cruel unfairness of it all.

"It'll be okay," murmured Cadance. She said it because these were the words they both desperately wanted to believe. "Can I get you anything?"

Remedy shook her head. "Mom is already getting me tea, I think."

"Oh, well you should go lay down and read a book; that's what I do when I want to disassociate from a bad situation."

"That sounds like a good idea," she sniffed. "Thanks grandma."

Cadance stroked her mane. I'll come see you in a little bit, sweetie. I have to go take care of something.

Remedy nodded obediently before vanishing in a snap of magic particles.

Cadance gritted her teeth in a sneer. "Shining," she growled.

She teleported into the study where sat a vacant desk with an empty whiskey bottle, Remedy's pregnancy test and a few papers fluttering to the floor in a cold draft. She turned to the curiously wide open double doors just in time to see a white figure disappear over the railing of the seven story high balcony.

Her eyes went wide in horror. Shining. He wouldn't. Adrenaline shot through her as she teleported out into thin air and instinct took over. She locked onto the quickly receding form of her husband as he plummeted toward the hard crystal courtyard. Her horn lit up as she threw her magic field around him a quarter second before impact and broke his fall. She unfurled her wings and spiraled down to meet him softly on the cold ground.

Shining laid on his side, heaving in some hysterical panic. When Cadance's presence of mind returned, she teleported them to the privacy and comfort of their bedroom, placing shining on the mattress.

All of Cadance's emotions had gone through a wood chipper, making it impossible to decipher what she was feeling right then. It took moments of listening to her husband bawling before she could put any words together at all.

"Shining, what the fuck were you thinking?" she exploded.

Shining covered his face as he dripped tears on the bedspread. "Nothing," he cried. "I don't think at all! I'm so stupid, Cadance; I ruined everything!"

Cadance's face softened. "You don't ruin… everything."

"I should have just let her tough it out like you always said."

"Well… yeah," she droned in beleaguered agreement. Better late than never, she supposed.

"I didn't think it was possible but I feel worse than when I did this to Flurry."

Cadance sighed and laid down next to him, placing a foreleg over him.

"Killing yourself isn't going to help; it's just going to make everyone else sad when we need you the most."

"I've disappointed everyone," he wailed. "And with the damage I've done, they'd all be better off without me."

"That's not true. You just need to listen to me more." She couldn't believe they were finally having this discussion almost thirty years into their marriage.

Shining buried his face in her chest and shook with fresh tears. She sighed again and stroked his mane and hoped that Flurry was consoling Remedy somewhere.

"Hey, you wanna know something funny?" asked Cadance. "For half a second I thought you might have jumped to escape my impending wrath."

For a while it seemed that her words hadn't even penetrated the cloud of despair encircling his brain but at some point she realized that his frenetic shaking was no longer from sobbing but instead stifled chortling that made his nose run.

She smiled and began to laugh with him in spite of herself as his cackling spiraled out of control and soon they had both lost it. Overwhelmed by the gravity of all that had happened, they laughed until their sides hurt and shining had to smear his nose on his fetlock.

"How can I laugh when everything is horrible?" He gasped.

"You can't die because I'm pregnant too," added Cadance without much thought. "You remember why."

His laughter died immediately. He pulled away from her chest to look into her eyes as if checking for sincerity. "Oh… well that's kind of cool at least." - - -

The next day, an official letter arrived from Princess Twilight Sparkle confirming that she was also pregnant. Having had her announcement plans ruined by three other announcements in the past forty-eight hours, Flurry Heart unceremoniously mentioned her condition to her parents as something to be considered while they sat in her father's study, discussing what to do next.

In a relevant sidenote, Twilight's letter also made mention of a small spike in pregnancies that had been traced back to a large tainted batch of birth control potions that went out across Equestria and needed 'immediate attention' from suppliers and local officials.

"I can raise mine and Remedy's foal as fraternal twins and just… tell everyone I'm an unwed whore mother of three," suggested Flurry, gruffly from the couch.

"Okay, I guess," agreed Cadance. "But we can instead say you have a non-traditional lifestyle. Also you don't have to be unwed if you don't want." She cocked her head to one side as a subtle hint. "But that brings me to my next point, I think that your family unit is large enough to have their own castle and dominion."

Flurry's eyes widened. "What are you talking about?"

"I think we should ask Twilight if you can move into the old Castle of Friendship as the full fledged Princess of Ponyville."

For a moment Flurry was shocked at the prospect of moving far away from the empire but then she was shocked at the prospect of being in charge of her own fiefdom. "You'd… trust me with ruling Ponyville?"

Cadance nodded weakly. "You're old enough and It's not as if you're completely clueless about such things. It's quite a sobering experience. I think that you would rise to the challenge and it would do you a lot of good."

Flurry squinted back at her. "Really? You're not just trying to kick me out?"

"I'm trying to come up with a solution to a complex problem that hopefully works best for everyone."

Flurry sat up slowly. "Wow," she sighed. "I'm going to have to talk with Remedy about all this… I know she wouldn't like leaving her school or moving but she'd love living closer to Auntie Twilight. But what about dad?"

"What about him?" shrugged her mother disingenuously.

"We won't really have him anymore."

"You mean… for sex?" droned Cadance.

"Yeah."

"You will figure out an alternative, Flurry. I have faith in you. You're going to have so many options." She twirled her hoof in the air for emphasis.

"About all that," added Shining. "I've been thinking a lot… after trying to kill myself and I don't think we should continue going the way we've been going, if only because of alicorn overpopulation."

"But this whole thing was a total fluke," argued Flurry with a worried edge to her voice.

"Or a black swan event," muttered Cadance.

"Well, it's not ideal but there's plenty of other stuff you can do with us that won't result in pregnancy," she suggested with a hopeful smile.

Shining rubbed his chin with uncertainty before side-eying his wife for direction.

"Counsel," she sighed. "One minute."

The two of them flashed away into their bedroom.

"Okay, fine, Shining," she blurted, rolling her eyes. "But only because I'm betting that the distance and infrequency is going to naturally wean them off of it but it ends with this generation. This part of Remedy's life will just be a strange blip in the grand scheme and Flurry is going to explore other options and it's going to start to feel weird or wrong to her, especially if she gets immersed in a relationship with a normal pony. If they don't adjust naturally, we will make it happen."

"That's… fine," agreed Shining. "I'm- I'm still worried about them but I'll make peace with that in time, I hope."

Cadance nodded and whisked them back to the study.

Shining turned to his daughter and swallowed. "I think we're going to treat that a lot more responsibly and sparingly as it'll have to be a special occasion type thing."

Cadance interjected. "Assuming this all works out, it's my hope that relocating will also help you break out of your shell and you'll discover who you are and what you really want out of life, especially for your family."