As if believing he could feel the heat coming from her glare, Sweetie Belle continued to stare out of the kitchen window as her father sat silently outside, fishing. When five more minutes of unbroken focus on her father’s back proved not to do anything but make her angrier, she let out a frustrated groan and slammed her hooves on the table. Pearl trotted into the kitchen just as Sweetie Belle was burying her face in her hooves.
“You still upset with your father, hon?
“Yes! Why won’t he tell me the rest of the story!? What’s the big deal? I get it, we were poor. That doesn’t explain why you let Rarity leave! What’s the big secret?!”
Pearl sighed and gazed at her husband through the window. Her heart pounded in her chest as the conflict within made her blood churn. She knew it would be too hard for Magnum to tell the story, but Sweetie Belle did deserve to know, and there was no calming the filly’s curiosity at this point. She didn’t have to discuss the whole story, just the right piece to ease her daughter’s thoughts. Pearl bit her lip and took a deep breath before looking at her youngest daughter. “Sweetie Belle?”
Sweetie Belle raised her head to meet her mother’s stern gaze. “Yeah, mom?”
“What I’m about to tell you, does NOT leave this kitchen, understand?”
Sweetie Belle nodded.
“We, didn’t necessarily let Rarity leave… she ran away…”
“Wh-what? Why?”
“She needed to go to Canterlot and study fashion. I…I need you to just try to understand that ok, Sweetie?”
“Ugh! You sound just like Rarity! “Try and understand” I’m tired of “”trying to understand”! What was so important about Rarity going to Canterlot that she couldn’t spend time wi-”
“We were going to put you up for adoption, Sweetie Belle.” a sharp voice pierced through the air.
Sweetie Belle turned around to notice her father standing in the door way, hat covering his eyes. Magnum let out a low sigh and turned to his wife and daughter.
Sweetie Belle’s lips parted, her mouth hanging agape as she her eyes focused on her father. She looked up and blurted out the only words her mind could process.”Wh-what?”
Pearl’s concerned gaze forced the white colt to put a hoof on her shoulder. “M-Mag, hon.”
“It’s time, sugarbear,” Magnum’s eyes fell back on his youngest daughter as he sat down. “Sweetie Belle. We weren’t the wealthiest of ponies before we had you, but we were confident we’d be able to take care of a second child. Turns out, we were wrong. We wanted you to have the best, so we considered giving you to an infertile family so they could give you what we couldn’t.”
Sweetie Belle’s eyes began to water as she tried to assess the truth in her father’s words. His stern glare confirmed that this was no fable and now she almost wished she hadn’t been told, yet, for some reason she couldn’t curb her ongoing curiosity. “B-but what about, Ra–.”
“Rarity overheard us talking about it, and she decided she wanted to go to Canterlot to study fashion. We told her she was too young…but that didn’t stop her…”
---
“MAG! MAG, HON! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!”
Mag snorted and his eyes were assaulted with jolting scenery as his wife shook him furiously. He sat up and placed his hooves on her shoulders to calm her down, and so his brain could process what was happening. “What’s wrong, Pearl?”
“SHE’S GONE! RARITY’S GONE!”
“What!?”
Pearl sprinted out of the room and Magnum followed her. He got to the doorway of Rarity’s room to find his eldest daughter not sleeping in her bed. He turned to his wife.
“I checked the whole house, hon! Where did my baby go!?”
Magnum’s eyes darted left and right, scanning the room as if the answer would materialize in front of them. They suddenly focused on the ground and he lifted his head as the realization came to him. He ran back into the room and fiddled through the back of the closet. He pushed a few boxes aside and found nothing was behind them. “No, no, no, no, NO!
Pearl rushed in and gasped as she saw her husband come out of the closet. “Mag, she didn’t?!”
Magnum nodded. “She did. She took her magic school money.”
“But where would she…” Pearl’s eyes widened as the horrific realization struck a nerve that sent chills throughout her entire body. “…CANTERLOT!”
Magnum grit his teeth, turned around and began storming down the stairs. “I’m bringing her back.”
“I’m coming with you!”
Pearl used her magic to quickly prepare a saddle bag of Sweetie’s things. She levitated her gurgling daughter out of her crib and down the stairs into her baby carriage. She closed the door behind her as she caught up with her husband.
---
“I need two tickets for the next train to Canterlot!” Magnum bellowed as he slammed his hooves on the table.
The brown pony working the desk raised a brow at the white colt beaming with rage. “I’m sorry sir, but the train is undergoing service. The next train to Canterlot won’t be leaving for another three days.”
“I don’t think you understand, I need to get to Canterlot today!”
“No, I don’t think you understand, sir. There’s nothing I can do.”
Magnum reached under the ticket hole and pulled the brown pony up against the glass. “You listen to me, bub, you better find a way to get me to Canterlot or I swear I’ll…I’ll.”
Pearl put her hooves on her husband’s back. “Mag, hon!”
Magnum let go of the pony and took a deep breath. “Can you at least tell me if you saw a young filly come by here between last night and now?”
“I-I-I just started my shift an hour ago, sir.”
“Is there anyone else working right now who would’ve been here at that time?” Pearl chimed.
“Well, Herb, the conductor. He drives the train and checks the tickets, so if a young filly were to board an early train I’m sure he’d know something about it.”
“Where can we find him?”
“He’d be outside, he’s required to stay around the train when it’s in service.”
Pearl and Magnum rushed outside to see a gray pony eyeing the train and giving instructions to the workers.
“Yeah, I get a little bit of a pull when I try to brake, and I think there may be some coal residue caught up in the engine somewhere.”
“Herb?” Pearl inquired.
The gray pony turned around and smiled. “That’s my name? What can I do ya for?”
“Herb, did you at all see a little filly come this way between last night and now. She’s got a white coat, purple mane and tail, the most adorable azure colored-“
“Ahhh yeah, I remember that sweet little filly.”
Pearl and Magnum looked at each other and gasped. The gray pony continued.
“She was so cute, she was sayin’ somethin’ about visiting her relatives in Canterlot and how she’s always on the train this early. O’course I knew that couldn’t be true because I had never seen the young girl before and I always work the late night/early morning shift.”
Magnum blinked and shook his head. “Wait, so…you let her on even though you knew she was lying to you?”
“Well, yeah, she had paid for her ticket, I even upgraded her to fir-“
The conductor’s words were cut short by a blow to the face from Magnum. He pounced on top of the gray pony and began to deliver pound after pound into his face. Pearl screamed and tried to pull her husband off.
“Mag, hon! Stop!”
“ARE YOU STUPID?! WHY WOULD YOU LET A FILLY GET ON A TRAIN BY HERSELF! YOU IGNORANT, OLD, STUPID, THOUGHTLESS, FOAL!”
Pearl kept trying to stop her husband’s blows until the noise from the yelling caused Sweetie Belle to cry. She rushed over and tried to calm her. Hearing the yelling and screaming, a couple of nearby officer ponies arrived and, noticing the beating, tackled Magnum and started carrying him away.
“Magnum!”
Magnum grunted and struggled as he tried to get free of the officers’ grip. “LET GO OF ME!”
---
“Two days?!”
Magnum eyed his wife’s disapproved glare before stomping his hooves into the ground. He pressed his head against the metal bars that separated them.
“You’re lucky it wasn’t more, hon.” Pearl gently rocked her daughter to sleep before gently setting her in the carriage. The mother’s loving gaze scrunching into one of ire as she looked up at her husband. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know, Pearl. The thought of somepony being so stupid as to let a filly that young get on a train, and that fact that it was our daughter…I…I just snapped.”
Pearl shook her head in disgust. “I can’t believe you.”
“You’re seriously putting all the blame on me? What about Mr. “Oh she was such a sweet filly, I just had to let her get on the train!” Magnum shook his hooves while mimicking the elderly pony’s vernacular.
“He was doing his job. Rarity paid for her ticket. He was obligated to let her go.”
The slap from his wife’s comment caused Magnum to raise a brow and cock his head back. “So you’re on his side now?”
“I am on the side that makes sure my Rarity gets home safely.”
“What do you think I was trying to do, sugarbear?” a condescending tone rolling off of Magnum’s tongue.
“By using your hooves to rough up every pony you see? You’ve never been that violent before!”
“Forgive me, if I’m so passionate about my child that I tend to lose my patience with morons!”
“The only moron here is you, Magnum!”
Magnum squinted in disbelief, he blinked a few times and looked left and right to assure he wasn’t in some weird dream, then looked back at his wife. “Excuse me?”
“Yes! You. Are. A. MORON!”
“IF BEING A MORON MEANS PROTECTING MY FAMILY TH-”
“AND HOW ARE YOU PROTECTING US RIGHT NOW MAGNUM?! HUH?! HOW ARE YOU PROTECTING RARITY BY USING YOUR HOOVES TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS AND GETTING LOCKED UP IN HERE FOR TWO DAYS!? TELL ME THAT!”
Magnum opened his mouth to respond then curled his lips and swallowed. “I…I wasn’t thinking…”
“EXACTLY!” Pearl bellowed, tears now welling up in her eyes. “You’re the head of this household and you didn’t think! What if you had killed him, Mag?! You’d be here for LIFE! Did you ever stop to think about that? Think about what it’d be like to only have your daughters see you during visiting hours?!”
“I lost my temper. ok?! I admit it! I’m sorry!” Magnum’s breathing became heavy and staggered. Tears filled his eyes as he shook his head and looked around before looking back at his sorrowful wife. “It’s just…I’ve never felt so emasculated, sugarbear...”
Pearl sniffed and wiped her eyes with her hooves.
“I lose my job, then our money, and…and now my first born daughter?” Magnum gently grabbed onto the metals bars as his eyes danced around the room. His reality closed in on him like a slow immune destroying virus, his breaths became more staggered and he struggled to fight tears with deep inhales that only erupted as short gasps. He turned around and slid down the bars as they were the only thing that supported the back of his head as he stared at the gritty cement ceiling. “What kind of stallion am I?”
Pearl’s gaze softened with each word Magnum spoke. She swallowed, attempting to stop new tears from forming, but the ones flowing freely from her husband’s eyes shattered her spirit. She wasn’t sure if she was upset at herself for crying, or upset at Magnum for making it happen. She wanted to be mad at him, mad at his decision that could’ve been more costly had the police not stepped in, but she couldn’t. As each tear from his face hit the ground with what seemed like an ear shattering splash, Pearl’s annoyance at him faded away. Magnum’s sorrow was not one of the artists’ whose style had grown old and underappreciated over the changing times, nor was it the sorrow of a celebrity, whose reputation was no longer recognized by the public. This was the grief of a stallion who sacrificed his small something to give his family everything only for him to receive nothing and lose everything
Yet, here she was, scolding him, for making physical what had been a mental and emotional fight since the day he lost his job. She kneeled down and stuck one hoof through the metal bars and removed the hat from his head to stroke his mane, her eyes producing more tears than his as she stared into his broken gaze. She put her horn against his and continued to run her hoof through his mane, sliding the other one past the bars to rest on his chest, cuddling him the best way she could. “You’re the greatest stallion, a mare could ever ask for.”
Magnum’s staggered breaths began to space out as his eyes met Pearl’s. “P-Pearl…”
“You’re a fantastic colt, a great husband, and even more important, a wonderful father.”
The two ponies closed their yes and basked in a few second cuddle cry. When the tears dried, they stood up again and smiled at each other.
Magnum gazed at his hat, the beautiful straw piece his on the run daughter had made reminding him that time was of the essence. “Sugarbear, my stupid decision got me locked up in here bu−“
“Say no more, hon.” Pearl said as two tickets to Canterlot levitated in front of them. “Train leaves tonight.”
“Two tickets?”
“For me and Sweetie Belle.”
“Why not just leave her here with me? Leave her diapers and foo−”
Pearl puts a hoof on Magnum’s head.
“Sugarbear, what are you doing?”
“Checking to see if you have hay fever, because you must be sick if you think for a second my baby is spending two days in ANY cell.”
Magnum couldn’t help but chuckle. “You always know how to make me smile.”
The two ponies embraced with a short passionate kiss.
Magnum looked at the carriage where is younger daughter slept soundly, and then back to his wife. “Be careful.”
“I will, hon.”