"I honestly don't know how I survived," Redheart concluded. "The injury to my hip was more than enough to kill, that far from a hospital."
Cadance tapped her hoof on the crystal of the library's table. "I... can explain that. So many ponies were dead, so many wounded. Celestia couldn't think straight. The only thing keeping her together was seeing group after group of freed prisoners, freed slaves, walking out of the castle into the sunlight, watching Shining cast the spell to break their chains."
Twilight looked at Cadance. "That doesn't explain how Redheart survived."
Cadance nodded. "Celestia was distraught, distraught about every single wounded and dead trooper, but when my detachment and I landed the captured airship, she commanded me to give a pint of my blood to Redheart. The fact that you were willing to die to save her—that hit her so hard. She's never truly resigned herself to her status, to her specialness, after even a thousand years."
"Oh!" Redheart gasped. "The old wives' tales are true? Alicorn blood?"
Cadance nodded again. "My blood brought you out of shock, and you were on the first stretcher the hippogriff navy carried back to the fleet offshore. After a pint of my blood, aggressive conventional medicine was enough."
Redheart snorted. "'Aggressive.' I didn't wake up for a month. I woke up in Canterlot."
AP hugged Redheart back to his chest. "What was the bill that day?"
Shining Armor grimaced, and smacked his lips as if he were eating rancid peanut butter. "Three hundred fifty dead, half in First Battalion. Five hundred ninety wounded. One thousand, three hundred and fifty-three slaves freed. We didn't count the slavers' bodies, but we took forty-four prisoners. None of them had any information, so we buried them at sea on the trip home."
"What?" AP said. "Buried at sea? What did they die of?"
"Drowning."
Redheart shrugged, and kissed AP. "I spent three-quarters of a year in the hospital while they rebuilt my hip. I applied to Canterlot University from my hospital bed and started in the fall semester. And of course, we met each other in the spring of my freshmare year."
AP shook, cold slicing through him, and he poured some more hot chocolate but skipped the booze. "That—Redheart, my love, how? How did you do all that? Live through all that?"
Redheart looked around the library, stood, sprinted to a trash can, and vomited her hot chocolate and most of her dinner into it.
She wiped her eyes, then her mouth. "It had to be done. Slaves. Slavers. I just, I just kept thinking about Treble and Livey. What if somepony had stolen them? Would I quit, or would I do everything I could to save them? Celestia's Own don't quit. We might get killed trying, but we never stop."
She sat back down and wiped her mouth again, then looked back at the table. "I... I need to go to bed. Princess, Prince? When are you heading back to the Crystal Empire?"
"Late tomorrow," Shining Armor said. "Night train."
"Let's... let's get breakfast together," Redheart said. "Come to our place, and I'll make waffles. And I promise—no war stories. We'll let our foals play together, and we'll all catch up, like old friends."
At noon, about six weeks later, AP went to meet Redheart, his lunchbox gripped in his teeth. He lifted his wings up off his flanks. Why did they keep the hospital so hot? Yes, yes, the patients wore thin gowns, and it was the middle of winter. But did the staff sections of the hospital need to be so overheated? Magic cost money, after all, and as the Hospital's accountant, he had to sign the checks!
He walked through the employee's-only entrance to the back of the Emergency Room, waved at Dr. Steel, and entered the supervisory nurses' office.
Redheart was already in there, her back to him, standing up on her rear legs. She held a nail between her forehooves and a hammer in her mouth.
She tapped the nail halfway into the wall, just below the frame holding the bloodstained scrap of fabric.
Redheart dropped down to all fours and turned to see AP. After placing the hammer on the desk she said, "Dear! How's your day?"
"Great. What are you hanging, Honey?"
Redheart smiled at him. "I pulled my old guard stuff out and decided... well, I decided..."
She pulled a wooden display case out of her bag, turned, and hung it on the fresh nail.
It wasn’t anything fancy: no medals, no Cross of Valor, no Diarchs’ Thanks. It was simply a large version of the new Ponyville Home Guard shoulder flash, which showed a foreboding cave entrance with four armored ponies—one of each of the three tribes, and a batpony—surrounding the cave, preparing to enter. A purple alicorn stood, wings flared, in the middle of the four. The flash bore the unit’s newly-awarded designation: Twilight’s Own.
"I still can't talk about the Cross to anypony else—but I'm glad you understand, now. After telling you what happened, well... I feel like my past, hmmm, what am I trying to say?"
AP walked over to his wife, tossed a wing over her back, and then circled it around her belly—the belly that the two of them had learned only a few days before was carrying their next foal. He leaned his head against hers, and Redheart sighed.
She raised a hoof to her own belly, touching his wing. "So many of my friends died, but they made an Equestria that's safe to bring our foals into..."
"You helped make that Equestria, too, my love. Never forget that."
She closed her eyes and sighed. "The past made me the pony I am—and I'm proud of that pony. I'm not afraid of my past anymore. I'll have those nightmares until the day I die, but after talking about everything to you... the nightmares have a tiny bit less power over me."
They kissed deeply, and he rubbed her belly with his wing.
After they broke their kiss, Redheart smiled at AP and said, "Let's eat! I'm starving, and we have no idea when the next emergency will crash through that door."