Greengrass awoke in a hospital bed. “Oww...”

“Hey!” A nurse ran over as he tried to get up. “Take it easy!”

“What day is it?” he managed.

The nurse ignored him, shoving him back into the bed. “You’re not getting up until we can run some more tests. You took quite a beating.”

“Trust me, I know.”

Greengrass was able to look around enough to note that he was in the castle infirmary. There were a few other patients, though none that he recognized from Cadenza’s party; from that he concluded that the attack had been successfully stopped.

Despite everything, I pulled it off. I’m still great at this Game…

Notary came in half an hour later. When she saw that Greengrass was up, she started; Greengrass smiled slightly at that. “Hello, Notary.”

“Sir.” Notary trotted over to his bedside. “You’ve been out for about two days. I’ve been handling your affairs in the interim.”

“What happened?”

“Majordomo took the fall for everything. It seems that he, in a fit of ill-conceived fervor, decided to bolster the USF’s reputation by creating a sabotage group and having them be stopped by the unicorns. He committed a great many crimes in the process, including providing funds and a magical sun pendant to a Celestia-worshipper, exposing Shadowbolts to the group, and, in the end, inducing the group to attack Cadenza’s party.”

“Fisher?”

“Is leading the charge against Majordomo. He wants it to be very clear that he keeps his own house in order.” Notary’s voice turned slightly scornful. “The USF too. They arrested Majordomo themselves, and four other of Fisher’s employees who were, apparently, in on it. Majordomo is finished, and Fisher humiliated, but the USF looks sterling. They can’t help it if some lunatic tries to make them look good in a bad way, apparently... although Fisher's efforts to have them replace the Royal Guard are on hold. It seems he's no longer considered a good judge of character.”

“That’s about what I expected.” Greengrass shifted so that he could sit up better. “And us?”

“You and I were understood to have infiltrated the group seeking to expose it. We of course could not go to the Guards because Fisher would have suppressed any real investigation, so we instead confronted Fisher directly. We defeated his cultist and one of his USF in his office, then exposed him directly at the party. It all went as planned, though unfortunately Mango Mania somehow burned Fisher's office down while we were out saving the day. He's alright, but it seems that certain documents Fisher expected to find implicating us--documentation of your financial backing of the CCPS, our names on Mania's list of supporters-- were destroyed in the blaze. If they ever existed at all, of course."

“You searched my home and yours for other evidence Fisher might have planted, I hope.”

“Of course.”

“So…” Greengrass began to tick them off. “We stopped a sabotage group from crashing Cadenza’s party, and Fisher is not only humiliated but loses his secretary and personal assistant of twenty years, plus other staff, and his legislative efforts are torched too. That sounds about right.”

Notary smiled.

“That said, the next time I embark on a scheme without you, yell at me, would you?” Greengrass grinned. “I don’t get hit in the head nearly as often when you’re around.”

“Of course, sir.” She paused. “I’m…happy to be back.”

Greengrass smiled. He would have said something, but words weren’t necessary.

###

Greengrass was well enough to leave the infirmary a day later, and he made his first destination his quarters. He decided that even Notary couldn’t object if he took a day or two off and slept.

On his way back, by coincidence, he ran into Archduke Fisher.

“Bobbing!” Greengrass grinned. “How lovely to see you! Shame about Majordomo, but I suppose that’s what you get when you don’t hire the best.”

Fisher stared at Greengrass with pure, unadulterated hatred. “I will crush you.”

“Yes, that worked so well for you the last time you tried.” Greengrass chuckled.

“Your depravity will not be allowed to continue. Do you know the history of this Court, Greengrass? Every now and then, there’s a period where corrupt and vile ponies like yourself somehow obtain power. Those eras end, Duke. And this one, I think, will end very soon.”

“Not by your hoof.” Greengrass shook his head. “You know what your problem is? You treat the Court like it’s your favorite game.”

“You’re the one who calls this a Game. To me, it’s a duty. A sacred—“

“It is a Game, but not your game.” Greengrass smiled politely, every inch the lecturer instructing a student. “You’re a chess player. And in chess, all that matters is snapping up the enemy king. What’s that phrase you told me after you won the Canterlot Chess Championship? ‘No price is too great for the scalp of the enemy king?’ But that’s not how the Game works.”

Greengrass strode around Fisher. “You see, in the Game we play, you don’t get all your sacrificed material back at the beginning of the next round. Each little operation we try doesn’t start from scratch. The ‘pieces’ you throw away? They stay lost. And you don’t know how to play a Game like that, where pieces besides the king are important and need to be protected.” He shrugged again. “Your loss.”

“I had you!” Fisher hissed. “You got lucky. You got very, very lucky. I was one move away from your total destruction.”


Greengrass considered. “Well, yes, you were. You did almost have me, but you put too much focus on bolstering the USF, and by the time you wanted to deal with me, you didn’t have the material left.”

“What the Hay does that mean?”

“It means you would have won if you’d managed to keep Notary.” Greengrass lost his smile. “You betrayed her. You sacrificed her for the sake of the USF--for the sake of showing they'd be willing to arrest one of your staff--and when you needed her to deal with me, she was already gone. She would have followed you into Tartarus; she would have brought wrack and ruin upon me if you’d given the word – but the one thing she couldn’t accept, that cost you her services, was your plans to betray her.”

“Like you wouldn’t discard her in a heartbeat if she became an impediment to your plans,” snapped Fisher.

“I’m not a chess player, Fisher. I’m a gardener. What kind of gardener sacrifices his most prized flower for the growth of his plot? Maybe I could get a boost, in the short term, by sacrificing her – I’m sure many nobles would pay me dearly for her now. Another if I sacrificed my other resources; my bodyguards, clerks, business partners… oh, I bet I could even wrangle a promotion to Archduke. But what would I end up with, selling my flowers to expand my garden? A huge, barren plot.” He paused. “I weed, Fisher. I take out the impediments to my success. I don’t take out my allies.”

Fisher said nothing.

“Set aside questions of right and wrong; I think we both know that such questions don’t have much to do with how we work. It was bad play.” He pointedly turned away from Fisher. “And that is why you will never defeat me.”

“Archduke.” It was Turquoise Blade, one of Fisher’s subordinates in the USF. “Princess Luna has requested your attendance. Urgently.”

“… yes, of course.” Fisher began to walk off. “Be careful, Greengrass. You’ve made a powerful enemy.”

Greengrass smiled placidly. “Anytime you want to try again, Bobbing, I’d be happy to finish what you started.”

Fisher had no response.

###

“That was a bit harsh, wasn’t it?”

Greengrass looked up from his tea. It was a few hours later, and he was drinking a mug of tea in a common drinks lounge. “Fancy Pants? Whatever do you mean?”

“Oh, I heard through the grape vine about your little spat with the Archduke.” Fancy Pants sat by the Duke, and ordered a fine Prance wine from a passing waiter. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of you being so fierce, even after Lulamoon showed you up at the Gala.” He smiled slightly. “This one was more than just a Game, wasn’t it?”

“I have no idea to what you are referring.”

“Oh, you don’t need to be coy.” Fancy Pants leaned closer to the Duke. “You were mad about what he tried to do to Notary, weren’t you?”

“And just what do you know about that?”

“I hear things,” said Fancy Pants, blandly. “But honestly, why should you be ashamed of it? You care for her, you didn’t want her to suffer a terrible fate, so you acted to save her. That’s something to be proud of. Noble, even.”

Greengrass raised an eyebrow. “Well, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Fancy Pants thanked the waiter, who had come back to deliver his drink. “But, you know, Duke, something occurs to me.”

“…that I deserve a special reward for, at great cost to myself, exposing the CCPS and whoever was in charge of it?”

“No. That there’s a lot of ponies… in jail, in the Mild West, one who works for the Princess now… who also had close friends that didn’t want them to suffer terrible fates.”

Oh. Greengrass’s shrugged. “Are you referring to those who stole from me, those who betrayed me, or both?”

“Both,” said Fancy Pants, easily. “I would hope that seeing it almost happen to a friend of yours would give you more… empathy for those others.”

Greengrass was silent for a moment. “Most of those ponies in the Mild West that you refer to chose to go there, willingly, instead of suffering the prescribed punishment for crimes against me. When a gardener steals a bag of money from me, and he would rather live in exile than go to jail, shouldn’t I be seen as doing him a favor by allowing it?”

“And the rest? Those whose only crime was disloyalty?” Fancy Pant’s voice took on an edge. “Octavia Philharmonica, say?”

“…it’s part of the Game. The potential for reward is great – just look at Puissance, who could probably purchase every other noble on the Court and have change left over – and the risks are great too. Octavia knew what could happen when she entered politics. She made a bad move by betraying me. Why should I protect her from that?”

“So if Notary really did go to jail thanks to Fisher’s machinations—“

“I thought we were all agreeing that it was Majordomo.”

“ Whoever. If that happened, your only concern would be whether it was good ‘play’ or not? You’d feel no concern for Notary if you had to determine that she bungled her plan and deserved to be caught?”

Greengrass was unable to answer for several moments. “Ah… well, the play is of course…”

Fancy Pants shook his head. “If that’s true, I pity you, Greengrass.”

“…I don’t mean to be rude, but is there a point to this conversation?” Greengrass sipped his tea. “I’ve things to do.”

“Yes, of course. Well, to get down to it – as I understand it, the current rumor is that you undertook this whole effort, exposing the group and all, in order to try to regain your seat in the Court.”

Greengrass debated his response. “I think that would be appropriate, yes. Certainly I did more than Mounty, and he got a seat.”

“I see. But in order to get your seat, you opted to destroy the group and, hopefully, their noble backer.”

“Yes…?”

Fancy Pants smiled, and there was something a bit… predatory, Greengrass thought, in it. “I must tell you then, Greengrass, that you cannot regain your seat that way.”

“By serving the nation?”

“By destruction.” Fancy Pants sipped his drink. “That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? Each step you took up in the Court was over the broken career of some other pony. You solve your problems not by building up your allies and yourself, but by identifying your enemies and crushing them. Even this time, you didn’t try to launch some great public works project, or build up the careers of ponies that could help you later, or anything like that. You found something you could break.”

“What’s the difference? I won, and—“

Fancy Pants’s glare froze him, and the white-coated pony continued. “You are no longer in the Court. Winning is no longer enough. To get your seat back, it can only be by Luna’s personal favor. And I can personally assure you, as her friend and confident, that so long as all you can do is destroy, so long as the ponies you weeded out continue to suffer the effects of your actions, the Court has no need for you.”

Greengrass began to rise. “Well, I—“

“Sit down.”

Greengrass wasn’t sure what it was, but there was a tone in Fancy Pants’s voice that made it impossible to disobey. He sat.

“You were removed from the Court. Many wanted you exiled, or at least barred from the castle, but you were given another chance, to see if you had learned your lesson. And yet, each scheme you came up with was another plan to tear down somepony so you could build yourself up. This one was no different. If it wasn’t for one thing, your ‘reward’ for exposing the CCPS would be a well-paid ambassador position somewhere far, far away.”

“And the next time a group like that arises? Without me--”

“Oh, there are ponies whose job it is to seek out enemies to the nation and destroy them. But they aren’t in the Court, and for very good reason.”

Greengrass made the connection. “…you aren’t in the Court.”

“No. No I am not.”

They stared at each other for a moment, until Greengrass said, “I believe you mentioned something preventing my exile?”

“You saved the Shadowbolts,” said Fancy Pants, simply. “For no apparent reason, at no gain to yourself. You showed that you can, in fact, be constructive.”

“I see.” Greengrass settled back in his chair. “So you’re saying I can’t get my seat back until and unless I make restitution to the ponies who stole from me and ‘build them up’?”

“In part. As for the other part, until you can actually show that you’re able to build ponies and institutions in general up and not just tear them down… you might accrue all manner of rewards; I understand you’ll be receiving a medal later for exposing the CCPS and Majordomo, but you won’t get within a hundred feet of your old seat.”

Fancy Pants rose. He smiled and said, briskly, “Well, good to see you’re back on your feet. I’ll check up on you later. In fact, I think we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

He left, and Greengrass had to take a few moments to steady himself before drinking his tea.

###

“I don’t know if I can bear it, Notary.”

It was the next morning. Greengrass had been subdued, and Notary had asked him what was wrong. So he’d told her about his conversations with Fancy Pants.

“I destroy things. I weed. That’s my talent.” He sighed. “It’s all the same, isn’t it? Who cares that I succeed by knocking the others down instead of growing over them? It’s the same result.”

“Honestly, sir, I think you’re being too hard on yourself. You have numerous successful businesses—“

“It isn’t that I can’t do it.” He paused. “Okay, in gardening, I can’t garden except by vigorous weeding. But yes, I’m sure I could run, with immense effort, successful businesses and political efforts, like my father. But I’m not my father, and I’m not going to live like him. I might as well give up and go home if the alternative is to spend my life denying myself anything I enjoy.”

Notary paused. “Can I ask you something, sir?”

“Always.”

“Didn’t you get… any pleasure at all, from knowing that you’d saved me?” She paused. “I was happy when I thought that my actions would help save you, and not just because you’re my employer, or because I want you to be king.”

Greengrass was about to give a joking reply when he paused. “Er…”

“The problem with your father was that he didn’t do or gain what he wanted.” Notary trotted over to Greengrass’s desk. “Suppose for a moment that you found you liked… being constructive. Would you really have any objection to growing, not weeding, if it was a more effective way to win the Game and rule the nation?”

The question startled Greengrass. For so long, he’d been convinced that all he could do was weed his way up, that he hadn’t considered many alternatives. “I suppose… I mean, if I really did enjoy it, but…”

They looked at each other.

Greengrass broke the silence first by laughing. “Well, it’s something we don’t need to think about for a while anyway. Seeing as how we still aren’t part of the Court, and we’ve both been given our medals and whatnot, what would you say to a vacation? I hear Prance is lovely this time of year.”

Notary nodded. “While I usually don’t take vacations, I suppose a few days off could be relaxing.”

“Splendid!”

The two laughed and continued their plans, for vacations, for food, for anything and everything frivolous. Though two of the most ambitious ponies in the Court, they allowed thoughts of politics to pass from their minds for the moment. They were still alive, free, and working together once again.

For the moment, that was enough.

Author's Notes:

And justice is served! Except for Fisher, who got away with brainwashing those Royal Guards and everything else he did. And Majordomo, who takes the fall for everything including a bunch of stuff he wasn't responsible for. And Puissance, and GG, and... okay, justice wasn't served. But the slightly less bad guy won, and that's something!

Hope you enjoyed your foray into the original Duke Abides. Maybe someday I'll rewrite the story according to the canonical stuff referenced in JULP. But until then, I hope we can all wish the Duke luck as he tries to be a better pony. :-)