Alex blinked, opening her eyes in the gloom of her hospital room. There was no pain, only a strange stiffness in her limbs, particularly on her belly. All around her, the room was in shambles. Her own green fur was all over the floor, though none appeared to be missing from her body. There were bloodstains on the edges of the room, splashed near the door or soaked into the mattress. She'd woken quickly enough that they hadn't even cleaned up after her.
Her heart started beating, and the monitor beside her began to beep. Her lungs filled with air, and she began to hack and cough. Coming back felt so often like she was about to drown, her first breaths as much a struggle as they would be for a newborn pony.
Someone moved across the room, though she had trouble focusing on him at first. Purple coat, mane like lightning, jacket stained with iron-smelling blood. He approached her bed in a daze, smelling like sweat and worse and still wearing a dirty mask on his face.
Alex was still too weak to resist as he lifted her right foreleg, checking the monitors, feeling at her pulse with his own sensitive hoof. "God, what are you?" His words came through stretched and distant, like she was hearing them from very far away. Her brain was still coming back.
"Alive," she croaked, hacking up a mouthful of blood and slime onto her chest. Her chest that now looked pristine, no trace of stretching, or swollen teats in preparation for her birth, or any other sign that she'd been pregnant for almost a year. She looked like the day she'd come back from Equestria. She could almost smell Equestria in her mane. "Almost. Gimmie a minute."
Oliver tore off his mask, gold eyes watery. There was still blood in his mane. "Death doesn't give up its captives," he said. "To die is not to exist. There's nothing left to return."
Alex couldn't help it—she smiled. She knew the expression didn't belong, knew it would probably further upset him. But she couldn't help it. "I met a religious pony y-yesterday... was it yesterday? I don't know. I think his was more traditional."
She'd been right, of course. That wasn't what she was supposed to say. Oliver's expression darkened, his eyes growing sharp. "Don't mock me, Haggard. Not after the night I just went through."
She opened her mouth to snap back—at least that part of her brain was still working. But she swallowed what she would've said, sitting back in her chair. "I've seen the place you're thinking of," she whispered. "I don't think it's so scary."
Oliver grunted. "And yet you keep coming back."
She smiled again. "That's because you're here. And some other ponies, I guess they're okay too."
He didn't smile back.
That was when her memory fully returned. Alex wasn't in the hospital because of any of the battery of accidents that had happened to her over the years. She hadn't been shot, or run over. She'd been doing something much more important. Was that why Oliver was so upset? "What about the baby?"
His expression didn't change. "He's fine. Cloudy is watching him. Healthy, stable."
"It was him or me," Alex muttered, looking down at the bed. "I hope you... I hope you know it had to be him."
Oliver rested his head on her shoulder. She took hold of him, waiting there in the silence, and ignoring the smell. She didn't know how long it took Oliver to speak—a long time. "I'm not... I'm not happy about the ones I love giving themselves away over and over. Death has never given back anyone else I ever lost. One of these days, it will keep you too."
"Maybe," she whispered back. "Not today."
Alex got to her hooves then, rolling off the other side of the bed and feeling a little of the nastiness still present there. This wasn't at all like her husband—the hospital was kept impeccably clean most of the time, up to the strict pre-Event standards of cleanliness. But most of the time he didn't watch his wife die in front of him.
"Careful!" he shouted across the bed, rushing towards her. "You shouldn't be on your hooves yet! Get back in bed!"
She didn't, standing and straightening without difficulty. "Olive," she said, her voice as soft as she could make it. "I died, remember? I won't have a recovery time." She turned sideways, lifting her tail out of the way. "See? No damage. No stretching. Nothing."
"Oh." He waved a hoof, dismissively. She could still see the pain in his face as he removed his bloody coat, tossing it onto the bed where she'd been resting. "I guess you won't need all the get well cards, then."
She hadn't even noticed everything sitting on the bedside tables—well wishes from the ponies of Alexandria. It had far less color than back in the days of Hallmark and store bought cards, and there were no balloons to speak of. Plenty of fresh flowers and other tasty treats, though. Everything a new mother might expect.
"Cloudy is down the hall with our son," Oliver said. "Waiting for you."
“What did you tell her?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “I knew you didn’t want anyone else to know. Just said you needed time to recuperate.”
Alex didn't let herself think about any of the bad stuff, not just now. How could she feed the baby if she didn't have milk? How would the ponies of Alexandria react to her overnight recovery? None of that mattered just now.
With a population as small as theirs, the nursery was never exactly busy. A handful of births a month didn't justify having ponies assigned full time. Ordinarily Oliver or one of his medical assistants would've done everything. Under the circumstances, Cloudy Skies was there instead.
She was even wearing one of the nurses outfits, tailored specifically for her, resting in the corner of the room beside her own eldest daughter, Amy. The foal could already walk on her own, but had been confined to a rocker of some kind, something she did not look happy about.
“Damn,” Sky said. “You’re walking around already? Earth Pony must be a helluva drug.”
There was a single incubator in the center of the room, warm lights and beeping status indicators continuing as uninterrupted as they might've done in the world before the event. And in the center was Alex's first child.
She felt something between them then, something none of her magic had prepared her for. Looking through the glass at the tiny pony within, at the coat like her own, but bluer, with a few wisps of a mane a little like Oliver's, she felt something known to mothers throughout time, and to few others. She almost didn't even hear Sky's relief to have her back, didn't feel the hug, she didn't have an eye for anything else. She didn't feel satisfied until the little pony was in her arms.
Well, hooves.
There was nothing supernatural about the feeling, as was becoming increasingly the case with so many other things in her life. Nothing more than simple love in the huge violet eyes. "I think you were right," she said, looking up at Oliver. He had switched over to hovering nearby, watching her closely for any sign of distress from either of them. He was recovering his bedside manner a little the further they got from her death. "I think Cody would be a good name for him. Cody Pittman. That's you, sweetheart!" The baby seemed to be smiling at her, at least she imagined he was. She smiled right back.
"That's not a very good name," Sky said, her voice flat. "Maybe if he was a human baby it would be. But that's a pony right there. You should give him a pony name."
"It's Cody," Oliver said, looking exasperated. "Alex and I talked about it. Cody if it was boy, Mary if it was a girl."
Cloudy Skies rolled her eyes. "Well, fine with me. It's not my kid who's getting condemned to a lifetime of bullying. Isn't that right, Surefire?"
The foal looked up from her crib, whining and squealing and struggling against her bonds. Cloudy didn't let her out.
"Cody," Alex said again, testing it in her mouth one last time. "Yeah, feels good. Modern."
Sky grumbled quietly in a corner.
A few hours later and they'd moved into a different hospital room, one that lacked any of the leftover viscera from Alex's last death. Cloudy Skies wasn't wearing her nurse's outfit anymore. For good reason, since she was the one nursing the baby. It helped that her own was only a few months old.
"We'll figure something out," she said, her voice soft, reassuring. "Mystic Rune's had over a year to read over all the magic books. I bet Equestria has a spell for this."
Alex watched closely, ready to catch her little son if he fell. But pony babies weren't like humans—they could stand and walk almost from birth. He didn't fall. "You think there's a spell for helping ponies make milk?"
“It seems like the sort of thing Equestria would've thought of. On the farm, animals had trouble giving milk all the time. Humans have formula... but Equestria probably couldn't make that stuff. They'd invent a spell."
"Can you ask him?" she asked, slumping to the floor. "If I do... he'll probably hold it over my head for weeks."
"Sure," Sky said. "No problem. I was hoping this wouldn't be a bad experience for you. Weren't you saying we all need to do our part to have as many foals as possible?"
She shivered all over, remembering being cut open on the operating table. It was one of the most painful deaths in her memory. "I don't think I'll ever have another one, Cloudy. Not unless I grow up a little more. Turns out being technically big enough isn't the same thing as actually being big enough. Oliver did his best, but we just don't have the same technology."
At least Oliver was off getting the rest he deserved. Even Earth Pony magic could only keep a pony awake for so long. “It was horrible.” And that was all she said. Going into detail about her death… she didn’t want to tell another pony. Even Sky.
Someone knocked on the door, before pushing it open. Alex looked up, and was unsurprised to see Adrian and Moriah standing there. No Joseph to be seen, though they were all carrying food in various glass trays. Moriah even had a table levitating behind them in her magic, albeit a tiny plastic folding one. She'd really improved a great deal with her prosthetic in the last year. With her own hooves she pushed a stroller, with Dick sleeping quietly inside. He was the oldest of all their children by far, and also fairly well-behaved. Unlike his father…
"Hey, Alex," Adrian said. "Shouldn't you be in bed?" He glanced briefly at Cloudy, but didn't say anything about her nursing Cody. Alex wondered to herself if he'd even noticed.
So they haven't heard about what happened yet. "Nah," she said. "I'm more worried about Cody."
"Shouldn't be," he replied. "Nobody knows kids like Cloudy.” He set his containers of food down on the table, then embraced his wife. "You can rest. You don't have to be leading the charge as Alexandria's brave mayor all the time."
She obeyed, more to placate them than anything else. Cody watched her go with those big eyes, but was apparently too hungry to cry out. This was good, since by then Alex's hunger was starting to catch up with her too. Coming back to life was hard work.
"Joe's coming," Moriah said, when all of them but Sky were sitting around the table. "He said he just had one more thing to finish up at the office, and he'd teleport right here." There weren't any chairs, but ponies didn't really need them. Not when they sat like animals. Even Moriah wasn't wearing a full outfit anymore, though she still had a pair of shorts. Adrian had given up on clothes, though he had his utility belt.
"I'm sure it's important," Alex said, between mouthfuls of cornbread. "I hope he realizes he's stuck as mayor for at least another month. Maybe longer."
"He knows," Moriah said, exasperated. "Believe me, he knows. He goes on about it every night when he gets home. He says you and Oliver should've been more considerate—you could've had your baby when you were done with public office."
Cloudy Skies laughed. "Yeah, Rune's the model of restraint." She eyed the stroller, then Moriah. "Are you pregnant again yet?"
Moriah glowered. "This isn't about me, it's about Alex. We shouldn't stress her with this kind of thing right now—it's obvious she's had a really hard time with her birth. Just look at her, so pale, can barely even lift a spoon..."
Alex pushed her plate away, frowning. So maybe one of them noticed. "I'll take the job back as soon as Cody's ready to be separate. I don't know how long that is—I'm sure the Equestrian parenting books talk about it. I'll follow their advice."
"Oh, yeah. Interuniversal mass murderers give great parental advice," Moriah said. "You should put up a mobile with their despots on it, like Cloudy did. That way your kid grows up knowing who his friends are."
Now she really was feeling stressed. Joseph actually did arrive about an hour later, when they were done eating and Adrian had already left. He had a harsh conversation with Moriah, a hushed one with Cloudy Skies, then popped away again as quickly as he'd come. When he came back, it was with a photocopy of a spell diagram, and any resentment Alex might've felt at his tardiness melted away. Joe could be an idiot with his priorities, but at least she wouldn't have to rely on Sky to feed her son.
Alex had many visitors over the next few days. Not that she really needed to be locked up in the hospital anymore, but Cody did, and Oliver wanted her to. She obeyed if for no other reason than his blood pressure. Everyone who was anyone in the political scene of Alexandria came to wish her well—militia officers, traders, ordinary citizens. Some of them even left little gifts. She relished each one of these visits, mostly because she was losing her mind being locked in one small room and sick of pretending to be weak.
But one visit was unlike the others. It came near the end, when she was about to leave the hospital and return to her trailer. A dark figure came in so quietly she almost didn't notice him, until she smelled the plate he was carrying in his faint green magic.
It was cookies—her favorite cookies, as it happened.
Unfortunately, the natural pony fear of changelings extended even to foals, and Cody began to whimper and cry in the crib beside her bed, hiding from the newcomer as best he could with the blankets inside. Only covering the side of the crib with a blanket, hiding the changeling from sight, calmed him down.
"Hey," Alvin said, setting down the plate of cookies he'd brought on the edge of her bedside table. He looked far better than when she'd last seen him—much less starved, with his little wounds scabbed over and healing. "I wanted to apologize for our first meeting. I didn't know at the time, but I would've had Hiram wait if I had."
Alex smiled, reaching for the plate of cookies but not quite making it. "We'll see how those taste. Maybe I'll forgive you."
"Better than yours!" He levitated one over for her to try.
And he was right—it tasted much better than her attempt. Somehow he'd brought them here still warm, and the thick chocolate chips were still molten in her mouth, but not uncomfortably warm. She closed her eyes, enjoying something so good after so long eating whatever ponies happened to bring for her. The sweetness was exactly what she craved. "Yes, you're forgiven," she said. "It wasn't your fault to begin with, Alvin."
The changeling shrugged. "Not Alvin, if you don't mind. That me was a better person than I am now. Whatever turned me into this... made me a soul-sucking parasite... clearly I failed whatever judgement you all passed. I don't want my old name stained with who I've become." He nodded once at the cookies. "Just Chip now, if you don't mind. Since I'll never get the memory of what you fed me out of my mind."
They both laughed. "You want to talk about not being able to forget bad memories?" she asked. "You can't even imagine."
He stopped laughing. "Maybe not. But at least you get to be a real person, Mayor Alex Pittman. You're still you, just in a different skin. The Event didn't take your soul away. Your son there, he'll grow up not having to starve if he can't suck the life out of people. He won't frighten children just by walking into the room."
Alex opened her mouth to reply, but found the words came only with difficulty. "I-I... no, you're right. Being a changeling isn't an easy prospect... Chip. But I don't think that means you're doomed. I've heard stories of... some awful stuff other changelings have been doing. Really living up to their name, in other parts of the world. But not here. Riley wants to be different. She doesn't lie to anyone, and she doesn't have to be a parasite. I think you're lucky to have found her."
"Yeah," he admitted, his tone wistful. "I think I am. I've never seen anyone so pretty in my—" He trailed off, his wings opening awkwardly. He looked away, scratching at the ground with one hoof. "If you could just, never mention that to her ever, I'd really appreciate it."
"No point in trying to hide it. She'll know how you feel just by being around her." Alex gestured at the plate. "But fine. Bring another plate like this, and you've got a deal."