A service was held in memory of Flash Sentry: the young rookie who lost his life trying to protect the mare he loved. Hundreds attended. The pegasus' body lay in an open casket for all to see as they paid their last respects. His body showed no signs of the torture he'd endured, and he in fact looked peaceful, almost as if he were asleep. It was all thanks to the skills of a single mortician who had been called in from Manehatten.
While the Royal Guard gave a last salute to their fallen comrade, the mortician was tending to a second corpse; one that would not be receiving any final goodbyes. He used his magic to poke around inside the dead unicorn, shaking his head every now and then. It wasn't the worst he'd worked on, but it was close.
"I never thought I'd see my son again," the mortician sighed, removing the unicorn's ruptured spleen and placing it into a metal dish. "You knew him. Tell me about him."
An alicorn princess stepped out of the shadows to look at the corpse. She cleared her throat and dried her eyes before speaking. "He was sweet," she said with a small smile. "If he'd only had guidance when he was younger, he could have done so much good with his talents."
The mortician nodded in acknowledgement, and continued removing damaged organs. "How did he get his cutie mark—the one beneath this scar." He pointed to the unicorn's flanks.
"Birds," the alicorn replied. "He was good at, well, taking them apart. He was curious as to how they worked."
"And that got him marked?" the mortician asked with a raised eyebrow.
"No, it was…" the alicorn trailed off and shifted uncomfortably. "He killed a filly and his foster parents," she finally said. "I didn't know about his foster parents until recently; he'd said he never saw them again."
"How did you find that out?"
"It was the same way I found you," she answered, taking a blood stained folder out from beneath her wing. "Flash had this on him when Macabre…" She trailed off again, holding back tears. "Why did you leave him with such terrible ponies?"
There was a long silence, and only the sound of entrails being coiled into a bucket could be heard. "His mother and I didn't have a choice in the matter," the mortician said when he'd reached the end of the entrails. "She died giving birth to him, and I knew I wasn't capable of raising him alone, so I left him on the first door step I came across."
"You should have put him in an orphanage."
"Had I known what an orphanage was or where to find one, I would have." The mortician turned to face the alicorn and stared at her. He was the spitting image of the unicorn currently laying cut open on the metal table behind him. "I always stayed close by to watch him, but there wasn't anything I could do to help him. Do you know how hard that is, Princess Twilight?"
The alicorn shook her head and kept quiet. Once the mortician turned to go back to work, she walked up next to him. "I'm sorry for your loss." She put her hoof on his shoulder and he tensed up for a moment before letting his muscles relax. "I'm also sorry for asking you to come out here to do this. When I found your name in his file—"
"No, it's okay," the mortician interrupted. His horn began to glow and the corpse's chest closed back up. "I should be the one to do this. It is, after all, all my fault."
Twilight wanted to object, especially after blaming herself for the events that had transpired from her attempted rehabilitation of Macabre. Had she just left him in his cell and taught like she'd been instructed, everything would have been avoided. But was living in sorrow really a better fate?
The mortician draped a sheet over the dead unicorn's body and began levitating his instruments into his bag. The last thing to go into the bag was the bloody lab coat he was wearing. It rolled up over his head and he slid his hooves out of the sleeves. "He loved you, did he not?" the mortician asked, using his magic to remove the individual blood molecules from his coat.
"He did," Twilight replied sadly, staring at the floor in front of her. "And…and I loved him too." It was a confession to herself of something she'd long been denying. Her heart ached for him far more than it did for Flash Sentry. She was expected to go to the fallen guard's service, but she couldn't bring herself to look at him, knowing his death was his own fault.
The clasp on the morticians bag clicked shut and he turned to look at Twilight. He smiled and the bag floated up next to him. "Looks like he inherited my skills and my charm," he laughed quietly. He stared for a moment, hoping to get a look into Twilight's eyes. "You remind me of his mother," he said softly.
Twilight looked up and a weak smile made its way across her face. As she looked at Macabre's father, she felt a little peace settle over her mind. "Thank you," she said.
"Be careful, Princess Twilight," Macabre's father said, stepping past her to leave the morgue. He casually made his way toward the exit, but he could still sense Twilight looking at him. Just as he reached the door, he turned his head and waited.
"Um, Mr. Muerte?" Twilight was still standing where she'd been, pointing her hoof at him. Her head was tilted inquisitively and her voice quivered slightly as she asked, "How did you get those scars?"
The unicorn looked to his flanks at the X's of scar tissue covering either side. They'd been there for most of his life, and he would never forget how he got them, or what they covered. He looked back at Twilight after a moment and chuckled.
"It's a long story."