He awoke to all-too-familiar surroundings. The soapy scent, the crisp, off-white walls, and the humming of machines---he recognized them immediately. A hospital, he thought groggily. I’m in a fucking hospital. I just got out of a hospital, dammit!

The first time he’d regained consciousness in a hospital room, Flim had been seven years old, and in his initial confusion he’d assumed he was dead---either in limbo, or in Heaven. (He’d only later realized how optimistic that guess had been.) This time, however, instead of the angelic face of a nurse hovering over him, he saw his brother. And he could see him clearly---gone were the hot, staticky-bright swirls of colour brought on from the sickness. His fever must have broken.

Flam’s weary smile brightened a bit when he saw Flim’s eyes open, and he playfully prodded at his cheek. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

Flim chuckled, nodding upwards as he felt his twin’s hooftip brush through his sweaty curls---that sweet little gesture they’d started long ago. “Refresh my memory,” he croaked through a cotton-ball throat. “How many times have you saved my ass, now?”

“It doesn’t matter. You’d do the same for me,” he replied.

In his peripheral vision, he noticed somepony else in the room. Flim groaned quietly; he didn’t have to turn to know who it was. “Hello, Trixie.”

“You scared us half to death!” she shrieked. “Do you have any idea what state your brother was in after he went to see you?! He was ready to---"

“Come now, sugarplum.” Flam placed a hoof on her knee, and although she was still bristling, she didn’t jump out of the chair like she clearly wanted to. “Let’s give him some space.”

Flim tried to cross his forelegs and hissed; now he had bruises in both elbows. They must have recently removed another I.V. The hospital gown was still sticking to him, and it had some salty sweat stains, but it was impossible to tell how old they were. He’d just awoken from a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep---for all he knew, he could have been in a coma. “How long have I been in here?”

Flam tried to kiss his fiancee’s temple, and managed to mask the concern when she sharply turned her head away. “Just overnight. They got your temperature down shortly after you were checked in.”

“Oh, good.” He had to shuffle his hindlegs around to sit up. “I can’t be in here too long. She---she’s running out of time.”

“Who is?”

When he noticed Flam and Trixie exchanging a quick, worried glance, he couldn’t help but sigh. Explaining this was not going to be easy. “The baby. The baby’s coming early.”

“Now, brother, you don’t know that---"

“Yes, I do!” he snapped, louder than he’d intended. “Discord said so!”

“Well, he’s clearly still delirious,” Trixie muttered with a little sneer. She’d twisted herself around on her chair so that she didn’t have to face either of them.

“Listen, okay? Just listen, both of you.” Knowing that Trixie was deep in a sulk, he decided to address Flam instead, taking his hooves in a tight grip. “The minute I get out of here, I need to go back to Ponyville.”

He grunted in frustration when Flam tried to press his frog to his forehead. “I mean it, brother! My fever’s broken now. I’m completely compos mentis.”

“He says he’s not crazy, and yet he wants to go to Ponyville. Am I the only one who sees the contradiction there?”

“Trixie, please.” Flam carefully eyed his brother’s face. While he looked like something the cat drug in, ate, and then puked back up, there was a certain firmness to his words, and a steely look about him that seemed so unlike the feverish bundle he’d helped into the ambulance just the other night. As much as he wanted to feel his temperature, he let his hooves fall back to the bed. “You need to stay in here at least another few days, just so they can make sure you’ve stabilized. You’re in no shape to go running off now.”

“Okay, okay, fine. A few more days. But that’s all I can afford right now!”

“Flim...” He squeezed his hooves. “Brother. If you can look me in the eye and tell me you’re not ranting and raving anymore, I’ll believe you. But you were saying some very... strange things just a little while ago.”

“It may have seemed strange to you, Flam, but it’s all true!”

Suddenly Trixie cut in: “You said Discord himself came to visit you. Do you really expect us to swallow that tripe?”

Flim bared his teeth. “Considering how much shit you spew, Trixie, I’d think tripe would be the least filthy thing in your mouth!”

“Stop it, both of you!” Flam had risen to his hooves, rubbing behind his ears. “Please,” he added in a quieter voice as he stared down at the floor, “I don’t want to be caught between you. Don’t put me in that position.”

“He’s the one you should be scolding,” Trixie sniffed. “He’s frothing at the mouth about some hallucination he had, and you’re actually taking him seriously?”

“Oh, you think it was just a hallucination?” he said as he reared up on the mattress, yanking the sleeve of his gown up to the shoulder. “Can a hallucination do this?!”

Flim’s eyes flicked back and forth between his brother and sister-in-law, and noted with some satisfaction that the latter looked gobsmacked.

“You... you must have fallen,” Flam finally said.

Trixie cleared her throat. “He could have done that when he was thrashing around.”

“With what? Do you think I’d do this to myself? And what do you think I could have fallen on, brother? My collection of lion paws?!”

“Flim,” he said as gently as he could, “If you want us to believe you’re not, er, mentally imbalanced anymore, it would help if you weren’t....” He pulled his lower lip against his teeth as he tried to find the right term.

Trixie found it first: “Babbling maniacally.”

“Okay, okay, okay.” He closed his eyes, counted to fifty in prime numbers, and then turned back to them. It had taken a few moments, but it had at least calmed him a bit. “Please, listen to me. And I want you both to look very closely at this wound.” Screwing his body around, he rolled his shoulder forward so they could get a better look. The claw-marks had seemed huge and gaping when they first appeared, but now, a mere day later, they’d retreated to little scabbed holes. “You know that this wasn’t here two days ago, and you know that I cannot heal this quickly. Now, did either of you see me bleeding from this shoulder yesterday? Are there blood stains on my gown?”

“No, and no,” Flam said. His eyes hadn’t left the weird puncture-pattern.

“Then why can’t I get a couple of unicorns to concede that, oh, I don’t know, sometimes magic happens?”

“And what happens when you get back to Mudponyville, hm?”

“Trixie!”

“Trixie will tell you what,” she said as she finally made eye contact with Flim. “You’ll try to go win back that insufferable mare---Celestia knows why---and you’ll get your ass handed to you on a silver platter for your trouble!”

“I’m not.... trying to win her back,” he said, surprised at how unsure he sounded. “I’m just going to warn her about the foal. That’s---that’s all, I swear.”

Though he was staring at his lap, he could see Flam yank Trixie closer out of the corner of his eye. Some words were hissed in her ear, and a ripple of emotions went across her face. It looked like she’d gone through three of the seven deadly sins in the span of a few seconds.

“Fine!” she spat when Flam released his grip on her elbow. “Trixie will refrain from using that word, and she will give you two little lovebirds your much-needed privacy!”

Neither of them watched her stomp off; Flam was looking at his brother, who was looking at the wall. After a moment of silence, Flim finally turned and began with “Can’t you see this is something I nee---"

But Flam’s hooftip was quickly up against his lips. Using a tilt of his head, he made Flim look over to the privacy curtain that separated his bed from the other patients. For somepony who knew her way around stage lighting so well, Trixie apparently hadn’t realized that the bright lights from the makeshift hallway would cast her hovering shadow against the drab green drapery.

Flim just snorted. He knew she’d be eavesdropping, and he couldn’t bring himself to care. “Flam. Brother. This is something I need to do. And...” He picked at his salted gown. “In this state, I am going to need your help.” He craned his head up to give him a steely look. “Can I count on that, Flam?”

His moustache ruffled from side to side, which meant he was alternating gnawing on different lips. It was the only way he could keep himself from that terrible habit of chewing his hooves down to nubbins. “Alright,” he said in a very even, practiced voice. “On one condition.”

“Name it.”

This time Flam put his hooves on Flim’s cheeks, and forced his head around so they were nearly snout-to-snout. His eyebrows were knit. “You tell me, right now, what Connie said to you that made you flip out on her.”

“No.” The refusal, Flam had expected; but the sudden battered look on Flim's face was a surprise. “I told you, and I told her, that I’m never going to tell you.”

“Then you’re going to Ponyville on your own.”

“Flam, I can’t---"

“I gave you a condition, and you failed to meet it. So the deal’s off.”

Rather predictably, Flim pulled a pout. He was blinking rapidly, which Flam knew from experience meant he was trying to bring on those damned crocodile tears. Putting a frog to his neck, he closed his eyes and let out a sigh. “Okay. You want me to open up first? I’ll tell you a secret I’ve never told you before.”

That immediately got Flim’s attention, and he perked right up. “Oh?”

Flam began to fiddle with the loose ends of the undone bowtie he still had hanging around his collar. “Remember when we were seven, and we went to Name Dropper’s sleepover?”

His ears nearly cramped from how fast they folded back. “Yes.”

“And you woke up to everypony laughing at you because you’d wet the bed---"

His teeth grit together when he heard Trixie’s muffled squeal of laughter. “YES, Flam. I definitely remember that.”

“Flim...” He pulled his tie loose and placed it on his lap, idly folding and unfolding it. “I still feel terrible about that.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“You didn’t wet the bed,” Flam said, looking up. “I waited until you fell asleep, and I... er... I pissed on you.”

Flim stared at him for what felt like a minute, although, judging from his heartbeat, it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. “WHAT?!”

“I was angry at you that day, and that night. You’d cheated to win most of the games, and I let you, but... then everypony started calling me ‘the dumb one’, and you didn’t stand up for me.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry. I was a little colt, and I thought it was funny at the time.”

He could feel the hide on his temples twitching with his pulse. “Do you.... do you have any idea how much torment I went through because of that?!”

“Yes, I do, because you’d come crying to me every recess. And, as I said, I truly regret what I did.”

Flim huffed and folded his forelegs, trying to ignore the stinging of the bruises in the crooks. “Really. That’s what you wanted to tell me?”

“Yes, Flim. And I’m sorry.”

“You know, when you mentioned a secret, I thought it was going to be something more serious than a colthood prank.”

“Why?” he said with what sounded like genuine innocence. “What other skeletons would I have in my closet?”

“You never, ever told me about the time you tried to kill yourself, Flam,” he murmured with a deafening flatness.

Trixie gasped, and her shadow flickered as she moved, as if to run back in the room. She stopped just before the part in the curtains, and peeked in, looking up at Flim with worry. He smirked. Good! If I don’t let Flam know you blabbed, I’ll have something I can hold over your annoying little blueberry head for years.

After jolting back in his chair, Flam managed to stutter “Wh-How d-do you know about that?”

“Flam, ponies walk on bridges. They see things, and they talk,” he said darkly. Flam sagged, and when he covered his eyes, Flim pointed to Trixie, then back at himself, raising his eyebrows. She bit her lip and nodded meekly. I owe you one.

“I didn’t want to burden you with that...” he began, lamely.

“And I don’t want to burden you with what Connie told me!”

“Well...” He leaned forward. “Don’t you think that burden might be lighter if it’s on two backs instead of one?”

“It’s too heavy for you, Flam.”

And then he cracked a very strange smile. “You’re not heavy. You’re my brother.”

It was Flim’s turn to jump in his seat. They stared at each other, Flam smiling, Flim just stupidly letting his mouth hang open. He suppressed a little hiccup, and then quickly turned.

“Say, Flam,” he began, raising his voice. “Did you hear the rumour that Sapphire Shores is staying just one floor above us? It’s true! She’s even signing autographs when her fans drop in---"

The curtains billowed as a screeching Trixie took off in a mad gallop.

“Hook, line, and fucking sinker,” Flam said, watching with a grin as a couple of unfortunate nurses got bowled over.

“I guess there’s one ‘mud pony’ she doesn’t mind being around.”

“Trixie told me she's actually a unicorn, but her horn is hidden in her---"

“Shut up,” he said amiably. “We can talk pop culture later. Flam...”

Turning---and wincing when his new stitches squeezed in protest---he tilted his head towards his twin, and gently touched the tips of their horns, a tiny green spark jumping between them. “You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure about this? This is something you really want me to share with you?”

Despite what they led others to believe, they couldn’t actually communicate telepathically with each other. When they touched horns, however, they could briefly feel each other’s emotions (leading Connie to sneer that they were part-changeling), and now, from his head on downward, Flim absorbed Flam’s eagerness, fluttering with nervousness. Yes, he was sure, and he was ready.

“Okay,” he said, pulling back. “You know how Connie said she was thrown from a moving cart and got a gash on her belly...?”

Applejack shook the snow from her hat, smiling as the warmth from inside the house tingled on her cold cheeks. The crock pot had been simmering all day, and the delicious smells of cinnamon and butternut squash had imbued the room. “Howdy, everypony! Am I late?”

“Not at all!” Granny replied as she lifted the lid to check the stew. “We got another twenty minutes before dinner.”

“Can’t be soon enough! I’m hungrier’n a tick on a vampire!” She gave her grandmother a peck on the cheek.

“Why dontcha go warm yerself by the fire? Yer brother’s been stirrin’ up a pot of hot apple cider.”

“Aw, Granny! I can’t---"

“It’s the family-friendly kind,” she said with a wink. “Otherwise, I woulda been worried when I saw him servin’ some to Apple Bloom!”

“Oh, that’s a relief!” Applejack began a quick trot to the family room. Although she would have loved a stiff, frothy hard cider right now, mulled apple juice was almost as good. Her throat was dry from the whipping winter wind.

In front of a crackling fire, Apple Bloom was perched on Big Mac’s back, cradling a mug and telling him about the snowball fight she’d had after school. She was building up to an apparently exciting part---something involving the infiltration of a snow fort---when she noticed her sister in the doorway, and went bounding up to her. “Hey, Applejack! You look half-frozen!”

“Yup. That cider sure smells nice.” She gave her sister a boost back onto Big Mac’s shoulders and took her place beside them. It was so nice that they could finally do this again, just sit together as a family without some fight breaking out. The past few months had been smooth as butter.

“After dinner, we’re gonna roast marshmallows!” Apple Bloom said, and Applejack hid her smile behind a hoof when she saw how her sister’s eyes were gleaming. With all that she’d been through, she sometimes yearned to again be so innocent that the prospect of burnt candy could get her excited.

Big MacIntosh had been reaching for the ladle to serve her a mug, but he paused before grabbing it with his mouth. “Uh, AJ.... mail came.”

Her heart sunk. She knew what that meant. Sighing, she looked over her shoulder and, sure enough, a small package was sitting on the table behind them. Roughly once a month, Flim would send them. It was thoughtful, she had to admit, but each time she opened them, it felt like she was defusing a mail bomb. She didn’t know why, exactly, his packages made her feel so fluttery, but her heart was always pounding when she did so.

“Leave it,” she said, and her brother nodded. She already knew what would be in it, and it could wait. Every package had contained a small bag of bits, some item for the baby, and a letter. Those always went straight into the fire. At first she’d refused to take Flim’s probably dirty money, but after a gentle talk with Granny, she’d been convinced to open a trust fund for the little one. If she recalled correctly, it now had a whopping eighty-nine bits in it. Still... better than nothing.

“Why dontcha ever read the letters?”

“Because, for the hundredth time, Apple Bloom, I’m not interested in what he’s got to say,” she said crossly.

“But what if he’s got somethin’ important to say? What if---"

“Hey!” She held her hoof up. “You want yer marshmallow privileges revoked, missy?”

Apple Bloom recoiled at the horrible threat. “N-no!”

“Then don’t question yer elder ponies! Those packages are addressed to me, so I get to decide what happens to ‘em, got it?”

“So...” She began swinging her legs, and Big Mac playfully grabbed at one of them. “If Flim sent one with my name on it, I could open it?”

“Uh... I s’pose so.” Her little sister’s cunningness was starting to unnerve her. It wasn’t that she was manipulative, but she was already at that age where she felt the need to question the proper order of everything around her. Just yesterday she’d asked if she could marry Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo! Applejack shuddered at the memory. That had been an awkward conversation for sure. “But he won’t, an’ you can’t write him, neither. That's inappropriate.”

“Oh...” she said, deflated.

Big Mac, sensing the need to deflect the course of the conversation, offered a rare interjection: “Might wanna check yer room, AJ. Thought I heard somethin’ bangin’ against the window.”

She got to her hooves slowly. “Uh, okay.” That was strange... she hoped it wasn’t that damned bird again. Seeing it once was bad enough.

She went up the stairs, Apple Bloom’s second half of the snowball story trailing after her. She was glad at least that her brother had respected her privacy enough not to snoop in her room while she was out---apparently, while he was repairing her broken door several months ago, Granny had sat beside him, scolding him on how ungentlecoltly it was to barge in on a mare’s ‘private affairs’. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Rainbow Dash had dropped by, and left when she saw the empty room. Maybe their mailmare had gone a little off-course, yet again. Maybe---

Her thin lips pulled into a frown when she opened her door. Or maybe there was a note stuck under her window!

He was standing there, hovering behind the barn, the cold wind flowing his mane around his ears. When he heard her approaching, Flim’s ears perked up, and he turned to her, his face breaking out in a grin. “Applejack!”

Celestia, she couldn’t believe it. He actually had the nerve to not only come back, but almost outright demand that she come meet him! Unbelievable! Just as unbelievable as the fact that his smile made her want to burst into tears and melt at the same time. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t punch yer teeth right down yer throat!” she snarled as she approached, her heavy hoofsteps crunching into the snow.

He held a hoof up, but it was shaking. “Applejack, just listen. Listen to me. I wouldn’t come back here unless it was something serious.”

“Well---okay,” she said uneasily, her hoof balancing an inch above the snowy ground. “You got somethin’ to say t’me?”

“Yes, and, and, please listen.” He had sat back on his haunches if only to place both his forehooves together in the prayer position. She’d never seen him do that before, not even when Granny was murmuring Celestia’s holy name at the dinner table. “Please listen to me. I know you haven’t been reading my letters.”

Applejack looked him up and down, trying not to let that startle her. Although he was wrapped in a shoddy old coat and scarf, he looked somehow frail, as if the next stiff breeze could bowl him over. He’d never been robust, but there were greyish rings around his eyes that hinted at sickness. The snow was blowing between them, from time to time obscuring his face, so she gingerly stepped around the slick patch of black ice that had formed under the barn’s north eavestroughs. “Talk.”

He drew in a breath, and then let it out as he spoke, his words clipped: “Please get yourself to a hospital as soon as you can. The baby is in serious danger.”

The sheer horror of that made her voice gurgle with the sting in her throat: “That’s not funny.”

“I know it’s not! Do you see me laughing?” he said. “But you have to believe me! That baby’s coming early.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Really.”

“Yes, really! She’s going to be a preemie. And you have to get her to a hospital as soon as possible.”

Applejack could feel her brother’s superstitious nature crawling over her like a swarm of ants, and she shivered. She still couldn’t shake the image of that black-feathered bird tapping on the nursery window... “Why are you really here?”

“I told you!” he said, and his usual tenor was pinching up the vocal range, making him almost sound like a frightened little colt. “I had a vision, sweetheart---"

“DON’T YOU CALL ME THAT!”

Her own roar made them both flinch, and she was surprised at the intensity of it. Not her voice, but of the stinging pain that word seemed to lash against her heart. She had to choke a bit before she was able to speak again. “Flim, you... you think you can jes’ come back here an’ tell me some voodoo bullshit about ou---" Her choice of words changed halfway through. “MY baby? You think I’m-a fall fer that kinda thing, after yer sister pulled it on me?”

“No, no, this is true! Discord himself came to speak with me!”

“Go to HELL!” she screamed, scuffing around on the spot.

“Applejack, it’s true! Listen to me!”

“NO!” As she turned to leave, the tears were stinging so hard in her eyes she didn’t even bother to look where she was going. So she didn’t feel the snow skiff away from under her hooves---and she didn’t feel the slick bite of ice until her front hooves were skittering back against it.

Flim tried to lunge forward. “Applejack!”

But it was too late; she’d already slipped, her legs shooting out from under her. Her scream seemed dim in her ears---because when she landed, it was with a horrible, sick CRACK straight down, her belly smashing against the frozen ground.

“Oh, Celestia,” Flim whimpered.

Applejack tried to move, tried to struggle, but she could tell something was wrong. When she’d slammed down, she’d felt the foal bounce up from her navel to her spine, but... but... but something was wrong. She shouldn’t be struggling like this. She shouldn’t be feeling her belly lurch around. She.... her back legs shouldn’t be cramping so terribly.

She shouldn’t be feeling a searing hot gush of liquid trickling down her thighs.

Again, she tried to right herself, but something horrible seized her from behind, and every muscle in her lower body squeezed. Another wet burst shot forth.

“H-h-help,” she stammered, her eyes glazed straight ahead. Her cunt was on fire, and it felt like her cervix was clamping down on a knife, and she could feel shreds of something sickeningly moist sliding out, inch by inch. It felt like wet tissue paper, slicing and shredding as it pushed its way out.

“Get up!” Flim said, right behind her, his magic hauling her up. “Please, stand up! We have to get you inside!”

Author's Notes:

And now I'm going to let you think about what role Discord had to play in this...