“You're pregnant?!?” Midnight felt a weight thrown onto him as he fell back from Aurora, “W-what..? H-how..?” His head darted around, looking to Hopeful, who was retreating away from between them, and back to his lover, as if he was going to find out what was happening by looking for the answer with his eyes.
“Nighty, I know... Just bear with me, please... I really need you right now...” She faintly tried to move after him, stretching out a hoof for him to grab hold of.
“You're kidding, right? You, you cannot be serious about this... Can you..? Are you?” He was desperately confused, nothing about what she was saying was making any sense.
“I'm telling the truth! I'm pregnant! I'm not lying, Nighty!” she explained with the utmost serious tone she could, trying to get him to believe her.
He seemed to, although, not in the way she had hoped. “Did you...” Something clicked in his head, anger pulsing threw him faster than lightning. “DID YOU CHEAT ON ME?!?” Although even through his violent shouting, obvious tears swelled beneath his eyes, feeling an intense pain, as if a knife was cutting deep into his back.
Aurora was hopelessly trying to reassure him, screaming back just to make sure he would listen. “MIDNIGHT, IT'S YOUR CHILD! I swear it's your child! I swear...” She trailed of into a desperate sob, trying to look for the brash, unfazeable warrior she loved.
He wasn't there.
“Aurora, I'M A PEGASUS! And I don't see a pair of flyers on you! So what the fuck do you want me to think?!? That for some magical fucking reason two completely different fucking species can have a child together?!?” He turned away from her, trying to think, massaging his forehead with his feathers.
“NIGHTY, PLEASE LISTEN! I don't know how, but I swear on my life I would never cheat on you! It has to be your child!” She hobbled after him, feeling a chilly breeze seem to pick up.
“THEN LET'S SAY IT IS! ALRIGHT?” He turned back to face her, enraged. “Then what kind of fucking monstrosity is it going to be? Have you thought about that? What if it has one wing and half a horn, huh? What if it can't walk or breathe properly?!? WHAT IF IT JUST DIES BECAUSE IT'S BORN WITHOUT A SUN-DAMNED HEART?!? WHAT THEN!?”
Aurora began weeping, covering her eyes with the length of her leg as she began uncontrollably bawling, her entire face in streaks of tears. “Y-y-y... y...”
“WHAT?” He snapped at her, the wind that began harassing him just made his temper worse.
“Y-you s-s... S-said we w-wouldn't f-ff-fight... L-like this...” She began shaking almost too much for her to stay standing.
“Yeah, WELL, I ALSO DIDN'T THINK YOU WOULD FUCK ANOTHER UNICORN BEHIND MY BACK!” He began yelling directly into her face, almost causing her physical pain with the sheer intensity of his voice.
“I-I t-t-ttold you...” She collapsed down into the snow, on her knees, shivering.
“Yeah, well, I don't believe it.” He turned his back to her, walking a few paces off before placing his forehead against a tree trunk, unable to process his own thoughts.
“Nighty...” she cried out from the dirt.
Instead, he turned to Hopeful, who watched it all unfold in horror. “Hopeful, we're leaving.”
Hopeful failed to speak, opening his mouth to a wordless stutter.
“Come on, we're leaving.” Midnight insisted.
“I... I can't leave her... She can't survive out here alone...” he whimpered out, seeing the pegasus grow in anger with each word.
“Fuck you!” He shouted at him fiercely, “I SHOULD HAVE NEVER TRUSTED A FUCKING ANT OR A BLOODY WHITETAIL!” He slammed a hoof against the bark of the tree, breathing in the intensely cold wind, causing him to begin to shake.
Without saying another word, he glanced up into the sky, then back at his fallen lover, who was whimpering in the snow, shivering fiercely. He felt a painful remorse as he threw off Hopeful's jacket from himself, finally releasing his wings. He chucked the saddlebag of hay in their direction, as if some form of final gift, and lept upward, spreading his wings as wide as they would span, soaring upward and soon disappearing into the clouds, abandoning Hopeful and Aurora.
“He'll come back, Aurora.” Hopeful stood aside the weeping Unicorn, doing everything in his power to console her.
“H... How...” She sniffed, trying to wipe away the downpour of tears. “How do you... know that?” Her eyes were blisteringly red as they looked into Hopeful’s.
“He loved you. He really did. He wouldn't just leave like that... Not forever.” Hopeful sat down at her side, toughing out the cold for her.
“B-but... He's gone... Hopeful, he's gone! What do I do now..? I can't... I can't...” Aurora trailed off as her shivering overpowered her speech.
“We have to go, Aurora; it's getting too cold,” Hopeful requested as the steady drop in temperature continued.
“Go where? I... I can't go north anymore... Not without Midnight...” She folded into herself, whimpering. She was too devastated to move.
Hopeful attempted to lift her up, but she resisted his aid, leaving him stumped. “So you're just... giving up? After all this? What other option do you have, apart from the north? You can't just stay out here and freeze to death!”
“Why not?” She responded so calmly it was frightening, as if she had for the first time realized that as a possibility and didn't immediately reject it.
“Aurora! Come on, I'm not letting you die here!” He became more demanding.
“Hopeful, just go... I don't have any place anymore. I can't to go north without Midnight, and heaven knows I'm not wanted back in Maneich...” She sighed in her self pity, her situation slowly settling in.
“Maneich? Why not go back there?”
“Are you kidding…? Pregnant with a Pegasus' child? I'd be hanged.” She said it blatantly; it was simply a fact to her.
“Nopony would hang you for being pregnant! Come on, Aurora, you can return to your actual home, where this foal could actually live a life!”
Aurora simply stared at Hopeful. He had utter determination in his eyes. He would probably drag her to Maneich if he had to.
He placed his hooves onto her shoulders, forcing a tight and solemn meeting of their eyes. “Please, Aurora... My daughter died because of this war. I've killed someone else's daughter because of this war. I'm not letting a single other child die because of this fucking war.”
“Fine, Hopeful,” she said with great reluctance, still lost in her trance of lost love. “I'll go with you to Maneich, but not for myself or this baby... Because it's on the way north, and then I'll be able to ensure you get clear of this horrid place... You deserve to live more than I do...”
He reached out a hoof for her and she hooked her own around it, allowing herself to be lifted up. “Thank you.”
The next day, Aurora and Hopeful found themselves waking inside of a cave they had used as shelter. Everything felt a lot colder, now that there was only the two of them. Maybe it was the drop in numbers for body heat, but it felt like that wasn't the main factor in this chilly, almost sleepless night.
Aurora was completely disconnected from reality. During the night she would just fall into a fit of soft crying, eventually gathering herself up after a few minutes when it started to hurt her eyes too much.
Hopeful stretched his legs from inside of his sleeping bag, shuddering as he lifted his torso out to meet the coating of sunlight peering into the cave, the only light source they had now that their tiny excuse for a fire had died out.
“We should get going... Time isn't on our side.” Hopeful glanced over to the still-devoid-of-life Aurora lying with her back turned to him. He sighed, crawling the rest of his body out from beneath his sleeping bag and ever-so-slowly standing. “Take your time. I'll go check our maps. Make sure we're on a route that crosses the Unicorn border.”
He didn't see any immediate reaction. As far as he could tell, she was pretending to be asleep, or at the very least, her thoughts were too scrambled to answer him. Hopeful pulled out the map he had, seeing their already drawn out plan that took a straight shot north, trying to get right down the middle of Unicorn and Pegasian territory. He found a very old pen that took extra effort to click into action and began plotting out a very small detour to the Unicorn border, seeing a small valley at the northernmost point of the Unicorn nation. Not a single town, at least not one large enough to be noted, through it, meaning their chances of being caught were minimal.
“Hopeful...” Her tired raspy voice came past her dried tears.
“Yes, Auri?” He twisted his head around, trying to be as attentive as possible.
“If it's a boy... I want to name him Midnight,” she whispered, unable to forget his name.
This surprised Hopeful, an odd mix of pleasant memory and regretful reality. “That... That would be nice...” he said, trying to salvage whatever positivity he could. “What if it's... a girl?”
“I...” She sounded stumped. “I don't know...”
“Let's hope it's a boy, then,” he said, packing up his things, standing up, and equipping his bag.
He watched as she lifted herself up, sighing heavily. “Yes... Let's hope.”
“Aurora are you ok to start walking today? We can take the day off if you really need it.” Hopeful offered his hoof to help her out of her sleeping bag. She accepted, getting up to her hooves.
“No, it's fine... As you said,” she said, disjointed as she hobbled over to a hold herself against the cave wall. She grasped her stomach with her available hoof. “Time isn't on our side.”
“I know, but I didn't mean it like that. We're going to be traveling for a few months. A day off wont hurt if you really need it.”
She stood up trying to keep strong, bouncing off the wall to land on all fours and turn to him. “Hopeful, I'm perfectly capable of walking. And you need to get out of this country as quickly as possible.”
“Aurora, you can't ignore your own health for me. This is for you.” Hopeful grew worried; she was speaking as if all hope for her was lost.
“Escaping with Midnight was for me...” She dropped her head, packing up her sleeping bag.
Hopeful watched for a moment as this clearly broken mare got ready to leave. He let out a sigh and went to the exit of the cave, trudging through some snow that was building up. While waiting for Aurora, he took out his compass and map to find the path they would be taking.
He soon found it and heard Aurora begin trotting up behind him. He looked to the sky for the weather. It seemed fair. It wasn't snowing, and he couldn't see any windigos. Only a few spotty shadows coming from above the cloud sheet. And he thought he saw a small hole beneath one of the shadows, something peeking in through it.
“Wait...” It struck him. “Auri get back inside! There's Pegasi!” He stumbled back, running to Aurora, who was still waking up.
She wiped away at her eyes, trying to get any stale tears out as she realized they were in danger. “W-what?”
“Just get back into the cave and hide! I don't know if they saw us, so let's just hope they pass.” He lead her down into the deep tunnel digging into the small mountain. They reached a point where the main stream of light had not gotten to yet, and they hid down beside one of the protruding chucks of the wall.
They sat together, trying to reduce any and all noise, their light breathing gently finding its way into their ears, as only it remained.
Probably a minute passed before what Hopeful has been dreading happened. He heard a voice coming all the way from the entrance, creating a very clear echo. “They ran in here, Lieutenant!”
A new voice responded. “So it's all true, huh? Midnight ran away with some fucking Unicorn.”
Aurora's eyes jumped up and found themselves caught by Hopeful's. She couldn't help but let out a sharp gasp. Hopeful tried desperately signaling her to keep quiet as he unsheathed his knife in between his lips. With this Standard Earth Pony Military blade being his only remaining weapon, he prepared his attack.
The same voice continued, “Go get half of the fleet and bring them down here, and get the rest to bring Midnight back to HQ for his punishment. Also tell that fucking traitor we've found his...” he let out a light chuckle, “friend.”
“Yes sir!” The other one said, a swoosh of wings quickly following.
Hopeful attentively listened as the sound of a single step against cold stone bounce around the cave. “I know you're in there, Unicorn... We have Midnight. He's going to be executed for treason. But if you come out and play along, you might come out alive.”
He took another step.
“Or you can make this hard for my soldiers and make us have to drag your body out of this cave ourselves, and then I will not be able to be as kind.” He chuckled again. Soon, his speed increased, and his voice came closer to their hiding spot.
“Come on out. I'm not in the mood to play cat and mouse.” A very strong click echoed through the cave, and then immediately another one. He had just cocked his pistol. It worried Hopeful. This wasn't a fight he wanted to bring a knife to.
A short moment passed where the Pegasus didn't seem to advance. Aurora and Hopeful exchanged glances of fear. Neither of them was sure of what to do. “Alright, if that's how you want it.”
A shattering of stone complemented with an ear pounding bang met them as small shards of stone were blown off of the side of the wall they hid behind.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered to him, making sure the Pegasus wouldn't hear, and before Hopeful could stop her, Aurora launched herself up and out into the open, reaching up one of her legs in surrender. “DON'T SHOOT, PLEASE!” she pleaded to the gruffled, fully armored Pegasian Lieutenant with a loaded piece now aimed directly at her. Hopeful silently screamed on the inside, hating the fact she was trying to sacrifice herself for him.
He smiled a deeply unpleasant smile. “Ah, thank you for your compliance... Wait.” He inspected her more closely, trying to place a name. “You... You're...” He then laughed so hard his head slumped down, nearly reaching the floor. “YOU'RE THE FUCKING UNICORN PRINCESSES'S DAUGHTER!” The Lieutenant shook his head in joyous disbelief. “How happy will Commander Hurricane be when she hears we've brought back her traitor son and a fucking royal Unicorn?”
After internally patting himself on the back, he glanced up at her horn. “Now, I wouldn't try anything if I were in your position, ‘cause if I see a fucking speckle of glitter on that thing, you are getting a good few bullets in your skull. I don't care if you're the princess of wherever the fuck.”
“Where's Midnight?” she asked hastily.
“Don't worry, you'll be seeing him very soon... We have him very thoroughly tied up on a cloud up there. We found him for some reason watching this cave. He told us it was a manticore inside here, but I guess we found out he's a traitor and a liar, huh?”
“He was watching over me..?” Her eyes softened, and despite everything, she smiled.
Although her moment didn't last long as the Pegasus began laughing at her. “Aww... How adorable. You two get to be executed together.” He chuckled again as Aurora's joy faded. Soon after, a fleet of nearly a dozen Pegasi came down to the cave entrance, each of them geared from their toes to their ears.
The Pegasus Lieutenant was delighted as he heard his troops arrive, “Tie her up,” he commanded, and then two Pegasi came flying up beside Aurora, quick to get a steel cone onto her horn to prevent any magic. “Wait, don't... I'm-” She was smacked by one of the Pegasi as the other took out a rope and draped it around her back.
Although Hopeful was staying silent, it was once the two Pegasi draped a rope around her stomach and began to tighten it that he reacted. He yelled out, “STOP!” as he jumped out with his knife, slamming into the side of one of the Pegasi's helmets. He grabbed around the Pegasus and swiped his legs from beneath him, getting above him and grabbing their head into a lock, prepared to snap that ponies neck.
Every Pegasus in the cavern froze, listening to Hopeful. “SHE'S FUCKING PREGNANT! YOU CAN'T TIE THAT ROPE AROUND HER LIKE THAT!”
“Well well well...” The Lieutenant regained his cocky grin. “A second companion. How nice.”
“GET BACK, ALL OF YOU, OR I KILL HIM!” The Pegasus in his hooves tried to squirm out, failing to do under Hopeful's Earth Pony strength; he was ready to snap his neck with a hair trigger.
The Lieutenant was unamused and began slowly trotting forward as his Guards instinctively stepped away. Hopeful still didn't kill the Pegasus, despite his threats. The Lieutenant then calmly lifted up and placed the muzzle of his pistol to Aurora's forehead.
“Let go of my Pony,” he softly said in Hopeful's direction. Hopeful very reluctantly released this helpless Pegasus.
“Good.” He dropped the pistol and began walking away, not even sparing a glance as he gave out new orders to his Pegasi. “Tie them both up, and be careful with the princess.”
He glanced back with a vicious smile. “I think she might be pregnant.”
The next time Hopeful awoke after being knocked out by all of those Pegasi for struggling, he was in the middle of the air.
At first, he thought this might have been a dream, as he saw the ground be so far beneath him, but once he got a full bearing of his situation, it became evidently clear that this was in fact real life.
The reason he was not-so-majestically gliding upwards was that a rope was tightly fixed around his torso and two Pegasi with the other end were air-lifting him into the clouds. In his vicinity, he could see another elaborate pony carrying Aurora, although her restraints were tied around her legs and not her stomach. A dozen other Pegasus soldiers flew around them in formation, following the Lieutenant.
A mountain bursting through the cloud cover seemed to be their destination as the Pegasi carrying them were right on track for it and getting higher, nearly about to come up over the clouds.
Hopeful thought about struggling, but falling from this height would no doubt kill him instantly, snow or not.
“HEY!” he shouted up to the Pegasi carrying him. “WHERE ARE YOU TAKING US?!”
“Doesn't concern you, ant!” one of them yelled back as they breached the horizon of clouds. Hopeful got a face-full of freezing snow blasted into him as he was yanked through.
Before he could even get his eyes clear, he felt his weight set loose as gravity took a hold of him, inciting a slight panic that was very quickly eliminated once he slammed face first onto a very hard metal floor, hearing another body collapse beside him.
“Good work, everypony. Lock those two up, I have a date with Midnight Eclipse and the guillotine,” the lieutenant said as Hopeful wiped away at his eyes.
He found himself inside of a metal cart, along with an unconscious Aurora and all of their supplies nicely tied up, in what seemed to be a very new Pegasian Military base. Only a few buildings of any respectable size, and a singular Thunder Cannon, stuck out to him. A great armory and barracks built up from large, steel pillars stood tall beside each other, and a slightly smaller building stood directly beside the Cannon, which Hopeful could only assume held the devastatingly explosive Lightning shells. The Cannon, which stood barely taller than the other buildings, was a humongous pillar which was fitted with a mechanism to punch through the cloud it sat upon and fire one of it's bombs at great speed, the blast of which could wipe out most of a town in one strike.
Hopeful was thrown to his side as a Pegasus began tugging at the cart. Hopeful attempted to squirm out of the restrains, but not even his Earth Pony strength was enough to get out of them. He then looked to Aurora, nudging her to try and wake her up, but to no avail.
“Stop moving back there!” the Pegasus hauling them demanded.
“Fuck you!” Hopeful exclaimed back, not exactly pleasing them.
Hopeful was very quickly gagged and had a bag thrown over his head, although this didn't stop him from continuously trying to escape over the short period it took for the Pegasus to drag him and Auri down underneath the barracks.
“We’re here,” the Pegasus announced before he had his sight harshly returned by the bag being yanked right off of him.
He was in a tightly packed corridor, walls made up of smooth steel, with giant doors periodically dispersed down the length of the hall. He screamed through his gag as he watched the unaware Aurora be lifted up by two Pegasi, while a third unlocked one of the doors. Aurora was gently placed down onto the floor inside of this cramped cell with nothing more to show than a foul looking wooden bucket. Another Pegasus grabbed all of the bags out of the cart and hauled them back up the hallway and half-haphazardly chucked them into a large locker that he then promptly shut and locked by key.
Hopeful swayed his head back and forth, hoping that there would be anything that could help him and Auri escape. And to his surprise, he found that at the very end of the hallway there was a section of cloud, instead of wall, and Hopeful knew that he could move through clouds.
“What’re you lookin' at?” The pony who had been carrying him barked at Hopeful, quickly coming to a conclusion. “You want to get out of here, Ant? Here, let me help.” He went to the back of the cart and flung it upward, knocking Hopeful out onto the floor, rope around his hooves preventing him from standing up. Though, that wasn't much of a problem, as the Pegasus came and hoisted Hopeful up, dragging him toward the end of the hall. Once they had gotten to the seemingly dead end, Hopeful saw that the hallway did, in fact, lead to something: a giant hole, the width of the floor. The Pegasus, grabbing Hopeful loosely by the ropes, shoved Hopeful forward, causing him to stumble all the way to the edge and tilt forward as if he was going to fall.
He was forced to look down, and after doing so, gave a series of fearful muffled screams, trying to edge his way away from the execution pit, which lead directly down onto a very steep edge of the mountain, large jagged stones waiting to catch him after a six thousand meter drop.
“Go on, Ant, escape! All you gotta do is tell me to let go!” He laughed, enjoying himself greatly.
Hopeful shook his head to signal ''no'' as hard as he could. The Pegasus eventually put an end to his suffering and dragged him back. “I thought so,” they said, continuing to mock him.
Hopeful was swiftly taken into his own cell, right by Aurora's, having his restraints and gag removed just before.
He went to pound at the door, but it wouldn't budge. He screamed, but all of the Pegasi had left, leaving him to himself as he stared out of the small set of bars at the very top of the door, substituting a window.
Eventually, he gave up, sat down and just waited. It was the only thing he could do at this point.
Time moved on, which Hopeful could only tell because of the light ever so slowly dimming as he sat there, trying to think, but failing to have any grounded thoughts.
Eventually, after what he guessed were hours, he could hear a few ponies trot down the corridor, leading him to hop up and press his muzzle against the bars.
Although, while he was expecting to see another soldier that he wanted to just beat to death, he was put off of his thought process once he saw Midnight. Slowly trotting down with two guards on either side of him, tied up just like Aurora and Hopeful were, now without any of his armour to protect him. But what really shook Hopeful was when he noticed that on his side, where his great wings once would rest, feathers tucked in tightly, prepared for action at any second, he saw nothing but a stump. His wings were cut off the their base, leaving behind only a prideless stallion.
“Midnight!” Hopeful yelled out, getting his friend's attention.
It looked like Midnight was about to burst into tears, and like he already had, as he looked into Hopeful's eyes. The downed champion only achieved a simple “I'm sorry...” before being pushed along, thrown into the cell beside Hopeful by the Lieutenant, who found bliss in every second, mocking Midnight for the thrill of talking down to who was once his great superior. “Have a good sleep, Midnight. You better enjoy it; it's gonna be your last one.”
Hopeful heard the door to his left slam shut, and the Lieutenant, along with a few of his guards, trotted by Hopeful's cell. The lieutenant gave a big ol' grin in his direction.
“Goodnight, Ant.”