Granny had just begun to ladle out the stew when the front door opened, and she looked up with an expectant smile---one that quickly dissolved when she saw Applejack, eyes wild and hysterical, sagging her weight against... him.

Big MacIntosh rose, scratching his chair against the floor. “WHAT in the---”

“She fell!” Flim blurted as he did his best to heft her over the threshold. His magic was fumbling around her knees, urging them forward, but his horn kept crackling and sputtering in his panic. “She fell on the ice!”

“H-he ain’t lyin’,” she stuttered as she stumbled forward. Behind her came a few faltering spurts, and Flim finally managed to close the door on the blowing winds on the fourth try. She tried to say something else, but the first sound from her mouth pulled out into a long, wailing moan when a cramp rippled up from the dock of her tail.

Flim tried, and failed, to keep her from slumping face-first onto the floor. “She fell on the ice. We, we need to get her help!”

Apple Bloom was dancing from one hoof to another. “Granny, what’s happenin’?”

Granny didn’t reply. She moved faster than anypony watching could believe, and knelt down by her granddaughter’s side, one forehoof holding the trembling chin off the floor, the other carefully moving back and forth across the side of her belly. “Mm-hm. Up you get,” she said matter-of-factly, but her eyes belied concern. “You.” That was addressed to Flim, although she wasn’t looking at him. “Getcher magic up an’ around her, but don’t you squeeze her or nothin’. Get her into the living room.”

He did as he told, as best he could; the green swirls around her gaskins did help them bend enough to help her rise, but they were flickering like strobe lights. “We have to get help! We have to get her to the hospital!”

“Apple Bloom, go to the laundry room n’ get some a’the clean rags. Scoot, now,” Granny said as Applejack staggered herself up to the couch. Her legs were splayed stiffly out from her body as she rolled onto the cushions, and she squealed when another tremor sent a visible ripple up her gut.

Big MacIntosh tried to step forward, but he stilled when Granny held up a hoof. Applejack was suffering through a full-body quiver, and under her choked sobs there came a soft, squelching sound. When she opened her eyes, they were strained and bleary. “Granny, it hurts! Please,” she hissed. “It hurts!”

“I know, honey, I know,” she murmured, not waiting until the youngest Apple had left before hefting up one of Applejack’s hindlegs and gently tucking her tail out of the way. “An’ it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. You gotta be brave, now.”

“Are you deaf?! We need to get help!” Flim cried between quick, nervous snorts. “I-I know it’s at least twenty minutes into town, but---” His eyes lit up and he nearly threw himself on Big Mac, gripping his shoulders with a startling force. “You! You can run! How quickly can you get to the hospital?”

His lips peeled apart, but he couldn’t answer---the puff of air that left his throat was all that was left of his voice, shrivelled up in fear.

“He c’n make it in ten, fifteen minutes if he really books it,” Granny answered for him, “But that’s time we don’t have.”

“What do you mean?!”

She’d been stooped over, inspecting the source of Applejack’s cramping, and when she lifted her head there was a wide, tight look to her normally sagging eyes. “She’s presentin’ alredy. We got a red bag.”

Apple Bloom came tumbling back in, and spat out the mouthful of rags. “What’s that? What's that mean?!”

Granny’s hoof had been positioned to preserve Applejack’s modesty from the stallions; when she withdrew it, they could clearly see something was pouting out from her sex, all wet, diaphanous and veiny. With a shrill little shriek, Applejack kicked her hoof up, her whole lower body seizing.

“It means...” Granny’s voice was husky. “It means we got six minutes.”

After one tentative step forward, Apple Bloom hazarded a glance between her sister’s legs, and jumped back. “Six minutes til what?”

“We got six minutes!” she repeated, and then began gesturing towards Flim. “You go gimme some scissors.”

Call it intuition, call it instinct---he leapt forward blindly, and ducked his head between his lover’s outstretched legs. Before anyone could scold him, or call him back, he’d used the tip of his horn to cut a jagged line through the hot, pulsing sac. Little flecks of liquid speckled against him as he yanked his head away, and a burning wetness gushed out from between her spread thighs. Blood bubbled on his horn when he tried to use his magic, and his eyes widened when he saw exactly what was pouring out of her---threads of cobwebby twill, stretched obscenely around what looked like... something tiny. It was a tiny, twitching crescent.

“Wha---” Although the alarms in his head were blaring so hard he could barely see straight, that little thing wobbling out from Applejack’s sex focused his eyes like lasers. He knew in his gut what it was, but---

Apple Bloom was the first to find her voice and identify what was poking out: “It’s a hoof! Oh my gosh, Granny, it’s a hoof!”

Flim’s knees had been wobbling, on the point of buckling, but for some reason the firm slap on his back brought some strength back to his muscles. Granny kept her hoof there, almost reassuringly, and for a second their eyes locked; in that moment, he could see the fright shimmering there, right before she gave him a simple order: “Pull.”

He nodded dazedly, staring at the nub that was hanging from the shredded tissue. His body seemed to be moving of its own volition; he wasn’t aware of it, just that the gruesome scene in front of him was getting closer, and that Granny had moved in his peripheral vision to hook her elbows around Applejack’s, lowering her head to whisper into her ear. His arm was visibly shaking as he closed the distance. He was numb as his frog pressed against the foal’s---but he jolted, letting out a cry, when the tiny hoof jerked and pushed back against his.

She’s alive! was the lone berserk thought that slammed around in his mind. She’s alive, and she touched me!

Big MacIntosh, who had been staring, dumbfounded, snapped to attention when Granny barked at him “Well don’t jes’ stand there like a jackass! Go fetch some help! Move it, git!”

The screaming whinny he let out as he barreled out the door seemed to carry along the wind. Within moments Flim could see him out the window, huge skiffs of snow blowing around his hooves as he crested the hill. He couldn’t help but vocalize what was on his mind, before he realized how insensitive it sounded: “What if he can’t talk when he gets there?”

“He c’n write,” Granny bit out. “Besides, them folks at the hospital know this family well. If he shows up all flustered an’ stutterin’, they’ll know what’s up.”

Just as he was about to turn back to the little ankle he had gripped tightly between his hooves, something caught his eye again. When he glanced back up, the hairs on the back of his neck bristled---he was face-to-face with a bird-like silhouette.

“Sweet Celestia,” he whispered as it went blowing off into the dark shadows. What in Tartarus was that?!

“No need to crowd, now,” Fluttershy cooed as she flew back and forth, shaking the pellets into the various food dishes. “There’s plenty for everyone.”

The rodents began to tuck into their meal, and her songbirds tweeted merrily as they flitted around. Even though Angel was stomping his foot by the side of his empty bowl, something caught her attention first: Sterling, her stork, was eagerly hopping up and down and clacking his jaws. With a titter, Fluttershy swooped down to pat his head. “There, there. This is your favourite! I bought some fish-flavoured pellets just for you.”

He spread his wide wings, motioning with his head as if he was trying to lift something heavy with his beak.

“I... I’m sorry, Sterling,” she said, trying to read his expression. She felt great sympathy for storks, since they were mute and could only communicate through body language. His was particularly tense. “Is there some reason you’re agitated? Nothing special is happening toni---“

A sudden, harsh rattling at the window made her startle into the air, scattering the kibble across the floor. After taking several long, deep breaths to calm herself, Fluttershy lowered herself to the ground, shaking her wings to her sides to de-fluff her ruffled feathers. “Oh my, who could that be? It sounds important...”

Normally she would gently remind her critters that leaping onto spilled food was impolite, but the rapid-fire tap-tap-tap against the glass sounded quite desperate, and she wasn’t about to let some poor creature suffer out there, not in this kind of cold! Unlatching the windowpane, she eased the shutter open with a creak. Then she beamed at her unexpected visitor.

“Lenore! What a nice surprise! I haven’t seen you in---”

She ducked her head with a tiny ”Eep” when the raven swooped into the room. “I-is something wrong?”

“Awk! Awk Aw-hawk!” She looped around in a figure eight, and then hovered in place, her pinions all splayed out. “Aw-caw!”

“Now, now, please calm down,” Fluttershy said as she closed the window. “Could you say that again? You’re speaking awfully quickly---”

Taking a perch above her chamber door, the bird bobbed her head a few times and let out another series of caws.

“Wh... really?” Fluttershy’s eyes had grown huge. “Are you sure?”

“Awk!” Lenore curved her wingtips together and rocked them back and forth in a cradling gesture. “Awk! Awk! Awk!!”

“HOLY SHIT!”

The wardrobe doors banged open and in a frantic fumble, she flung a scarf on her head and tried to wrap a wool hat around her neck. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” she squealed, and tossed what was left of the feed bag at her rabbit. “Momma’s going out! Angel, you’re in charge!”

“Ah-AHHH!”

Applejack’s whole face was twisted in pain, a few mucousy tears welling out from her clenched eyelids. “It hur-ur-urrrrts!”

“Y’gotta push, now,” Granny said as she snatched a rag away from Apple Bloom, wiping it under the blonde bangs. “Ain’t no time t’be fussin’! PUSH!”

Flim swallowed down the lump in his throat; despite the heartache that lingered between them, seeing Applejack convulse in anguish was so, so terribly worse than the vision Discord had given him. Again, the tiny hoof jerked around, and the pitifully weak movement snapped him out of whatever reverie he’d been in. His eyelids burnt with water when, out of nowhere, his mother’s voice came ringing through his memories: ”I raised you to be stronger than this, Flim.”

The pain seemed like a distant echo. He felt his resolve hit him square in the chest, and he wrapped his aura around where his hooves were clenched. With a firm, steady heave, he pulled at the leg he had clutched tight.

“I---ayyy-ahh!” Her neck snapped back at what seemed an impossible angle. “He-he-help! Help meeeeee!” The trickles of blood that were streaming from her sex thinned to pink as a spurt of urine joined them. “It hurts so bad! I... I...”

“You can do it, sweetheart!” Flim shouted, pulling at his daughter’s leg. “Come on! Just a few more pushes!”

“I... I...” Her jaw spasmed open, and she began to wail---the purest, most horrible sound he had ever heard come from her throat. “I want my Mamaaa!”

There---the snout. The snout was poking out.

Flim began to furiously wipe the strands of fluid away. He could see it---her perfect, little mouth. The swollen lips. Itty-bitty nostrils, puffing in and out as they sucked for oxygen. Applejack’s bleeding labia splayed open lewdly, and out came the head, the foal’s soft eyelids forced together from the bloating. As her cheekbone flopped down against his fetlocks, Flim gasped, barely registering the shock of wild, matted blue hair that puffed out after. He was cradling her face, staring down at her---at his little filly.

At his quiet, silent, unmoving little filly.

THUNK.

“Whu...?” Twilight hadn’t even realized she’d been falling asleep until the loud sound from the window jostled her back into the land of the living. She lazily lifted her head from her pillow, the page she’d been reading still sticking to her cheek. “What was that?”

THUNK.

There it was again. She carefully peeled page 143 from ‘Comparative Reproductive Biology in Placental Mammalian Species’ from her face and rubbed the bit of drool off the dog-eared corner. “Spike? Did you hear---”

Suddenly, her sleep-weary eyes were covered in a streaking blur of fur and fetlocks. Twilight squawked and waved her ankles in front of her face to clear away the intrusion, tumbling head-over-hooves off the bed with her pegasus friend’s legs tangled up in her own. “Dammit, Rainbow!” she screamed as she shoved the mass of yellow feathers off of her, “I told you to use the door, not the windo---”

Wait a minute. Yellow feathers?

“She’s having the baby!” Fluttershy shrieked from her upside-down position on the floor. “She’s having the baby, SHE’S HAVING---”

“Fluttershy! Fluttershy,” she said, gently turning her around so they could look eye-to-eye. “Hey, now. Take some deep breaths, okay? Just---”

“Applejack is having the baby!” she repeated, although her voice was ebbing back into her usual soft whisper. “Lenore---she’s a raven, you might have met her---she just told me---she, she said she was keeping an eye on Sweet Apple Acres like I’d asked her to, and she saw Applejack go into labour!”

The gravity of that hit her like a sick sock to the stomach. “What, right now?!”

“Yes!”

“But---but---she’s not due for another month and a half!” she said helplessly.

“I know!” In a surprising show of power, she wrapped both forelegs around Twilight’s waist and did her best to hoist her up. “Come on! Rainbow Dash is telling Rarity---”

“What in the name of Celestia is going on in here?!” Spike called through the door---and jumped, cat-like, out of the way as it blew open. He had to blink a few times before he could fully understand what he was seeing: Fluttershy, her wings blurred from how fast they were flapping, was hauling Twilight down the hallway like a lumbering locomotive.

“Spike!” Twilight hollered over her shoulder. “Scroll! Quill! Hurry!”

She grimaced when she felt a sudden weight tugging on her tail, but she didn’t turn to look back at him. “Wait, Fluttershy! If you’re getting me, and Rainbow’s getting Rarity, who’s going to get Pinkie Pie?”

“She’ll figure it out!”

Her eyes darted to the left. The bowl of frozen cherries was perfectly balanced on top of the wooden spoon.

To the right, now---the sugar-coated violets were on the spatula.

Between them, a quart of milk and a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

“Yeeeees,” Pinkie said with a slow-spreading smirk. “Zees weel be mah fay-nest cree-ay-shee-on!”

She slammed her hooves on the spatula and the handle of the wooden spoon, and, with impeccable timing, both bowls went soaring into the air; while they reached the apex of their leap, she deftly poured the milk into the ice cream and swirled it around. In the blink of anypony else’s eye, the last two ingredients fell into place just as she reached out and caught the utensils, spinning them around like drumsticks.

“Ta-da!” she crowed in triumph. “The very first do-it-yourself two-second sundae! This is the super-duperest greatest thing I ever---GAH!”

The spoon clattered to the ground as she doubled over, her eyes bulging out with a sudden, stinging pain. “Woo---woo---whoa!” Her hind legs nearly buckled when she felt a stab from the bottom of her gut. Both her ovaries twitched, followed by a spasm of her uterus, finished off by a pinching in her cervix. The whole ordeal left her panting on the floor.

“Whoo-ee, that’s the strongest Pinkie Sense I’ve ever felt!” she chirped as she rolled onto her back to get a better look at her still-rumbling gut. “Haven’t had that one in awhile! I wonder---”

Her mane and ears prickled up like she’d touched a van de Draft generator. “Wait. Ovary twitch, uterus spasm, cervix pinch... That must mean---OH MY GOSH! APPLEJACK’S HAVING THE BABY!”

She’d broken her ankle once. Every muscle inside her had clenched when that had happened, and everything from then on to the hospital had just been a scorching fire in her brain. But this was nothing like it---this pain, this horror, this agony was the worst kind she’d ever felt. I’m going to die, she thought as it split her up between her legs, And if I don’t, I’m going to be disfigured. This is going to break me. It will break me. I am going to brea---

She didn’t have time to think. Her birth canal, stretched so beyond anything she could ever have imagined, was ripping, torn, splicing---and the blast of pain was so searing and white-hot that for some time---some endless, blind stretch of time---she couldn’t see anything but the fireworks of colours behind her clenched eyelids. That was it. The dam of horrid, stank fluids had gone to pieces, and she was gushing in incontinent surges. She’d been broken. Busted open. Split...

And something slid out of her in slick wetness.

"Unnh....?" Applejack lifted her head as best she could, even though her neck felt like rubber. The scene between her legs was straight out of a horror movie: chunks of tissue lying about, and wet, pink, splashes of thinned-out blood everywhere. The hot sting of tears hit her eyes. Look!

Cradled in Flim's arms---and still joined to her by the greyish cord---was the tiniest, wiriest little foal she'd ever seen in her life. She was small, far too small... and she was lying still. Blue hair, she thought dimly. She has... she has blue hair...

“Why ain’t she cryin’?”

Apple Bloom’s voice had cut through the thickness of the silence, but nopony could muster the strength to answer. Flim was staring down at the limp body cradled in his arms, and with a final, silent push, Applejack’s body shuddered, and the foal’s hind hooves slid out.

“Why ain’t she cryin’?!”

Flim put his hooftip to his daughter’s chest and began desperately rubbing up and down. “Breathe,” he whispered.

Although her neck felt like loose jelly, Applejack did her best to look up from the floor; despite the pain, the fear, the humiliation she’d just gone through, something cut right through her when she saw the look on his face. “F-Flim? Why---“

“Breathe,” he said again, his irises shrinking down into his eyeballs. Propping her up on the crook of his elbow, he brought his opposite hoof up to her flaccid neck, tilting her head towards his. “C’mon, baby. Breathe.”

A fragment of membrane slid off her lip, but the tiny body was as still as death.

Apple Bloom’s voice was as shrivelled as it was choked. “G-Granny? What---”

“Breathe!” In one fluid, frantic gesture, Flim threw the foal against his chest, her chin sliding over his shoulder. He began slapping her back. “Breathe, baby girl. C’mon, breathe! C’mon!”

A slight twitch shuddered through her body, and her filmy lips parted, a thin stream of liquid dribbling out down his back. She was motionless.

Applejack choked; something like a dagger was seizing deep in her throat. “Wh-why---?”

Flim slammed the lifeless little body off of his shoulder and down onto his outstretched arm. “Dammit, BREATHE!” His hoof pressed up against her nose, and he bent down, taking a deep breath. Before anyone could ask what he was doing, he sealed his lips against the foal’s, and blew into her mouth.

The tiny ribcage lifted with the force of the air, and slowly deflated when his lips peeled away. Her eyes were still closed.

“Breathe, baby girl, BREATHE!” he shouted, and again, he inhaled. He puffed into her chest, which rose and fell, but she just crumpled back. Inert, unflinching.

“She’s gone,” Granny whispered. Her ancient eyes were brimming.

“NO!”

The frog of his hoof was against her sternum, and he began firmly pumping it up and down. “Dammit,” he screamed as his eyes watered, “Dammit, you fucking stubborn little filly! You’re just like your mother! LISTEN TO ME! Breathe! I’m going to make you breathe if it’s the last thing I d---“

With a wet hiccup, the foal let out a burp. A tiny fleck of mucous was flung from her gullet, and it sprayed across Flim’s cheek. He froze, staring down. Her mouth was open, and it closed for a moment as she drew her breath in, flaring her nostrils for the first time.

Applejack gasped. “OH---!”

Before anyone could speak, the sinewy little limbs twitched up from her barrel, and her head snapped back. Her eyes---the colours of the sunset, just like Apple Bloom’s---opened, and she stared up at her father. He stared back, his mouth agape. First, a barely audible gurgle: “Ehhh....” And then---

The scream was the sweetest thing Applejack had ever heard.

Flim hadn’t bothered to wipe the gunk off his face; he was staring down at the foal, trembling all over, his eyes misting at the corners.

“My... my d-daughter,” he murmured. He tenderly traced his hooftip along her soft, translucent cheek. “My little baby girl...!”

“Waaaah!” She paused to suck at the air, her hooves lurching, and let out another throaty cry. “Waa-aa-aah!!”

The hoof on his shoulder snapped him from his reverie, and with a dim, tear-filled gaze, he forced himself to look over to where Apple Bloom was sitting. She had an inscrutable little smile on her face. “Let them say hi,” she mouthed with a nod of her head.

His motions felt stiff and clumsy as he leaned over Applejack’s prone form, and let his daughter topple from his embrace and down onto her belly with a wet ‘plop’.

When Applejack raised her head from the rug, the first thing she saw were the gold-green eyes staring back at her with all the filmy, unfocused newness of an infant. It was all so fresh, so raw---she could feel the baby’s heartbeat against her underbelly, and their shared pulse coursing through the cord trapped between them. Just like that. It was just like that. Like a razorblade through her heart, she felt her former self shred to pieces, and that was it. She fell in love in an instant, fast and hard, and so full of pure, painful happiness.

“H-h-hi, baby,” she stammered. All those months of fear about her faceless, voiceless little filly... and now they were eye-to-eye. She could barely believe it. The poor little thing was howling her head off.

“Aw, I know, I know,” Granny said as she quickly swaddled the crying infant in rags. “It’s all bright an’ noisy an’ scary out here. But don’t you worry---yer Mama’s right here.”

When the foal tilted her head to the side, Granny tucked the last of the rags between her haunches and turned her around so she was flush with Applejack’s underbelly. “There ya go. You know what to do.”

Before Applejack could ask what was meant by that gesture, little Hesperides wrapped her lips around one of the sticky teats and began to suckle.

“Look,” she hoarsed out with a feeble thrust of her hoof. “Flim, look.”

“She went right for the nipple,” he said, his whole face glowing with pride. “The kid’s a genius!”

After discreetly smearing the tears from the corners of her eyes, Granny gently nudged Applejack’s sweaty shoulder. “Keep her on yer belly an’ roll yerself towards the fire. We gotta keep her warm.”

“What if---”

But she had anticipated his question. “A’course we don’t wanna let her get burnt! You plunk yer hindquarters down between ‘em, and keep the young’un pressed between the two a’yes.”

Gingerly, Flim turned his back to the fire and lay down beside Applejack. He felt like his very soul jumped when his underbelly brushed against the foal’s downy back. He turned his shining eyes up to hers and beamed. “You did it, sweetheart.”

“No,” she said with a crackle in her voice. “We did it.”

Be strong. Be strong. You have to be strong.

It kept hammering away at his brain as Big MacIntosh kept pace with the ambulance. The ponies pulling the loaded carriage were trained runners, but their legs were shorter than his, and even though huge swaths of sweat were frothing off his lips and sides, he easily stayed neck-to-neck with the unicorn whose horn was blaring at top volume. The siren made most ponies dive out of their way, save for a few inconsiderate assholes who cut them off---one even flashed a crude gesture as they went roaring by.

Be strong.

That voice in his head changed from time to time. Usually it was his, but sometimes the timbre changed to that of another stallion’s voice---one he recognized all too well. Sometimes he could hear Ma’s voice ringing out above them both, but the message was always the same: You have to be strong. They need you. They need you to be strong.

Tears were nearly blinding his eyes as he ran. I can’t lose another one, was the thought that kept pounding in his head. I have to do this for AJ. I have to. She... she...

The memories flashed through his mind, and he gritted his teeth. I can’t let her lose another one. The way she lost Mama... The rooftop of Sweet Apple Acres peeked over the horizon, and he gulped his bile back down his throat. AJ was the one who found her. She can’t... she can’t face another loss. Not now.

“We’re T minus thirty seconds!” the head paramedic screamed over the wind. “Everypony at your stations!”

Big MacIntosh barely noticed the door shattering off its hinges as he smashed his way through it. The sight in front of him made his hooves stagger across the tiles of the kitchen floor, and he skidded into place, even as the hospital staff blew by him.

“Applejack,” he said aloud.

Oh, Applejack. Applejack, his baby sister, was lying in a pool of her own viscous fluids, and yet---and yet, dear Celestia, there was a newborn filly lying against her belly. Still caked in the thick, waxy mucous of the womb, she had her little head turned to the side, her muzzle firmly tucked against a teat.

It felt like his heart had seized into a knot and jumped up into his mouth.

“L-look, Mac,” Applejack said weakly. “Look.”

Be strong, the voice in his head admonished him. He didn’t even flinch when Apple Bloom leapt on him and threw her forelegs around his barrel. He couldn’t register what she was saying.

“Look close, Mac!” Applejack said again with a raspy giggle as she stroked her hooftip through his niece’s mane. “She’s got yer big, dumb, goofy jug ears!”

He dropped his head to her side and burst into tears.

Author's Notes:

WHOOO-EEE! BABEH! So close to the end now! ^_^

I crammed a lot of references into this. Fluttershy talking to a stork should be one of the most obvious---and if you don’t get why Mr. Stork was named Sterling, you should look up the voice cast of Dumbo. If you don’t get why I named the raven “Lenore”... I really don’t know what to tell you. And the pony not only cutting off the ambulance but flipping them off as well was unfortunately based on personal experience.

Oh, and the TvTropes page hasn't been updated for awhile, so feel free to go nuts now that the grossest chapter is out there!

Thanks to Sir Barton for the advice on this chapter, and, of course, to everyone who's been reading along this whole time. Y'all mean the world to me!