They heard nothing further from Fluttershy, so both were left to assume she was able to return to Ponyville without further event. Spike expected there would be no further contact from Fluttershy too unless either they turned to her for assistance again, or something transpired that caused her to feel it necessary to break the silence. Of the two, Spike preferred the former option, liking the idea that they could count on Fluttershy again if needed, but he also agreed that it would be best they only do so when absolutely necessary and all other options are exhausted first, so to minimize risk of discovery. Thorax also requested that they still be on guard for at least the next following week and ready to flee the Vanhoover area should Fluttershy give them away, either intentionally or otherwise, as a precaution. As the days passed and they saw no signs of any danger of that though, it was clear Fluttershy meant it when she would keep what she knew about them secret for now.
Nonetheless, the whole encounter and how close they had come to getting caught brought back up the subject of whether or not it was really wise for them to remain in Vanhoover any longer.
“I know you like it here in Vanhoover Thorax,” Spike assured his friend as he sat beside the changeling’s sleeping nest. “I do too, and I don’t really want to leave any more than you probably do…but while I trust Fluttershy with my life, the fact she knows our secret now has added to the chances of us getting discovered…so I can’t help but wonder if we might be better off moving on to another location regardless, just to play it safe. That way, if Fluttershy somehow lets it slip where we are, we aren’t in danger of getting discovered. And you’re the one who’s on guard and ready for her to let something slip, not me.”
Thorax nodded along with Spike’s reasoning while he sipped from a glass of water and cleared the lingering congestion from his throat. “I see your reasoning Spike,” he said and sighed. “And frankly, you’re probably right. It’s just…I guess I’ve let myself become attached to living here, and maybe that wasn’t a smart thing to do considering we weren’t planning to stay long term in the first place, but…” he shook his head, scratching at the peeling chitin on his neck. “Assuming we did leave…where would we go? What would we tell Fly Leaf? What would we do once there?”
Spike thought about it for a second. “I guess we could go wherever we like,” he admitted, “wherever we can find work or funds to continue to be able to support ourselves at least.” He shrugged. “We’d have to look into it, I suppose. As for Fly Leaf…we told her when we took the job that we didn’t plan to stay long term…she’s already waiting for us to decide to up and leave…all we need to tell her is that we’re doing so now. Knowing her, she’d probably help us move out.”
Thorax frowned. “I’d just hate to leave her high and dry after she’s come to rely on us so much,” he said. He sighed. “And we’d still only be able to tell her so much, wouldn’t we? Could we even tell her where we’d be going, wherever that is?”
Spike frowned and realized his point. “Probably not,” he reasoned. “Otherwise, if someone did figure out we had been in Vanhoover, then they could just use Fly Leaf to get redirected to us. We’d be better off hiding that from her, and if she presses, give her some false location.”
Thorax immediately shook his head at this though. “No,” he stressed. “We’re already lying enough to that poor mare, I don’t want to add one more to it, not after everything she’s done for the both of us.”
Spike winced, and secretly shared Thorax’s revulsion to the matter. Both of them had become much more consciously aware about how much they had been lying to Fly Leaf after recent events, and both had been feeling especially guilty about it, especially as Fly Leaf continued to show both complete trust and aid for them. But he didn’t see a way around it. “Look, let’s just…be thinking about it for the next few days,” he urged. “And then we can sit back down and decide if we’re actually going to stay or move on. Okay?”
Thorax frowned, looking like he had already decided on the matter, but he nodded in agreement. “Very well,” he said.
In the meantime, Spike and Thorax worked to settle back into their individual lives and affairs, restoring what was the normal routine for them. Using the medication Fluttershy had left behind as instructed, Thorax continued to improve and recover from his illness at a gradual rate, but still faster than Fluttershy had predicted before she left. By midway through that same week, Thorax had recovered enough that he was more mobile again, capable of keeping on his hooves long enough to wander to and from the bathroom and about their room under his own power. Doing so still tired him out quickly and he still confessed to feeling “awful,” but it still heartened them both to see.
By that same time, the infection in Thorax’s horn had faded enough that he was able to resume basic magic and found he could raise his disguise and be able to maintain it flawlessly for a number of minutes. This was just long enough that Fly Leaf was able to step into the room and visit briefly with her ill employee without risk of her discovering he was actually a changeling and not a unicorn pony. This cheered Fly considerably and set to rest any lingering doubts she seemed to have about Thorax’s health, to the point that she sat down and apologized to both Spike and Thorax for her distrust on the matter.
Thorax wouldn’t hear it, though, and instead took full responsibility for it. “Looking back, you had every right to be concerned Miss Fly, and I deeply apologize for putting you through that,” he told his employer during her visit while he was able to keep himself disguised. “It was me that urged Spark to try and keep my illness to just between him and me and try and keep you out of it, and I admit that I did that out of vanity for my own private affairs…but I shouldn’t have. I very nearly brought serious harm to myself doing so, and I recognize that, as well as the trouble it nearly brought you and Spark…and that was wrong of me to do.”
Fly chose to wave the matter aside then. “It’s all water under the bridge regardless now, so I think we’re all better off moving on,” she said. “Let’s just…agree to not do it again, okay?”
“Agreed,” Spike and Thorax unanimously concurred without argument. Neither of them was eager to put themselves through that more than once.
By that Thursday, Thorax continued to show improvement to the point that Thorax himself decided he was out of the woods when his body began what Spike later came to think of as the “great icky purge.” Back when he was falling ill, Thorax had made mention that the glands he used for creating a cocoon were becoming clogged up, and while Spike hadn’t asked for more details both out of respect for Thorax’s privacy and the well-being of his own stomach, he figured they had remained clogged up during the time Thorax was sick. That changed Thursday when Thorax woke up that morning to discover his glands had both loosened up and were now working to drain out the build-up as well as any lingering infections within.
This occurred through either one of two sets of glands as Spike discovered. One was through what Thorax referred to as his “gel glands,” a pair of glands located in the back of his mouth that could secrete the green gel-like substance so commonly associated with changelings. In normal usage they were for creating cocoons or projectile spitting the gel to serve as impromptu traps or other purposes, completely under Thorax’s control and discretion of course. But in this case however, the glands began draining into Thorax’s mouth whether he wanted them to or not. For Thorax, this was relieving as it was finally draining a pent-up pressure that had been in his head, but for Spike it was notably less pleasant as it meant every time Thorax coughed or sneezed, small globs of icky green goo came flying out of the changeling’s mouth that then needed to be cleaned.
It thus went without saying that this reaffirmed Thorax’s need to cover his mouth when coughing or sneezing, and at first resorted to doing it into tissues that he kept close by. But when even the tissues proved to not being resilient enough to withstand the onslaught, Thorax eventually resorted to using a bucket to catch it instead. Either way, the mere sight of the gel disgusted Spike, so he didn’t really care so long as it meant there was less mess he would have to wipe up. That wasn’t the only problem the excess gel caused though, because inevitably a lot of the gel Thorax was secreting ended up swallowed, and eventually that upset Thorax’s guts enough that he ended up having to make frequent, occasionally urgent, trips to the restroom to sort out the aftermath. Again, unpleasant, but Thorax reasoned it was still good in the end, on the grounds that it was again aiding to clean out any lingering infections in Thorax’s body, though Spike told him upfront that he didn’t care to dwell on how.
The drainage also occurred through a second set of glands that were revealed to be located at the tip of the frog in the underside of each of Thorax’s forehooves, which he referred to as “resin glands.” All changelings had them, but only some of them made significant use of them, namely the structores, or builders, within the hive, as the glands, when properly coaxed, produced a sticky blue-green substance that, upon hardening, formed a chalky solid used for building things in the hive. Because Thorax had never served as a structor, he never had to rely on them too extensively (and was glad for it, because apparently working in such a position forcibly heightened one’s metabolism massively so to keep the glands producing resin continuously and was purportedly stressful as a result), but his still produced resin that regularly needed to be cleaned out (and apparently Thorax had done so privately without Spike’s knowing twice before since meeting the dragon).
But as these glands had also become clogged during Thorax’s illness, the flushing his body was undergoing struck them too, causing them to secrete the resin in regular amounts without his control. Thorax was thankfully able to keep it largely under control by regularly wiping his forehooves with tissues, but nonetheless urged Spike to avoid the discomfort of touching his hooves. And they found Thorax was still inadvertently tracking trace amounts of resin everywhere, as soon a dusty trail of blue-green hoofprints began to fade into view on the floor of their room. All in all then, it meant their room was a rather unpleasant place to be that Thursday for Spike, but nonetheless, Spike shouldered the duty of cleaning up after the ill changeling where needed.
Luckily for him, he quickly learned that a preferred bleach-blended cleaner Fly Leaf used in the shop worked surprisingly well to dissolve both the gel and resin Thorax was leaving, and once dissolved, both were easy enough to wipe away. Upon discovering this, Spike used the same cleaner to finally clear away the failed cocoon Thorax had left in their bathtub that Spike had otherwise been at a loss for figuring out how to clean up, the cleaner breaking down the failed cocoon enough that, upon adding some water, allowed the remains to be washed down the drain without problem. Thorax was surprised the cleaner was so effective on both of these secretions though, as his past experience was that they generally had to be scraped off with some effort. So he took note that the cleaner instead made it easy to clear away both, to the point he admitted he almost wanted to send some kind of anonymous warning back to his hive about it.
“Just imagine what would happen if this cleaner was spilled in my hive,” he said, envisioning the worst. “Use enough of it, and you could feasibly break down the whole hive!”
“Oh yeah, I can just see the pony armies all converging to attack now, armed with nothing but spring cleaning supplies,” Spike joked, who wasn’t too worried about it. If the changelings had gone this long without it being a problem, he expected it wasn’t going to change anytime soon, and pointed out it wasn’t the hive itself that would be seen as a threat to any pony that might learn this tidbit; it was the changelings that lived within it…and they couldn’t be “cleaned away” nearly so easily.
Whatever the case, Thorax’s “purge” went on for most of that day, but thankfully by that evening had begun to wind down as his body began to relax back into a more regular state. And after a good night’s rest that night, Thorax awoke rejuvenated and reenergized, so much so that, despite a few lingering symptoms such as a mild cough and a few remaining aches—both easily treatable with the medicine Fluttershy had left them—he felt recovered enough to try and go back to work, and that morning was disguised and working in the shop as normal. His stamina proved to still be not quite fully restored though, so by the end of the morning shift he had lost enough energy to no longer be able to keep going and had to retire back to his room. But having him in the shop working with the rest of them brought back a sense of normality that made Spike confident for the first time since Thorax fell ill that things were going to be okay again.
It also helped that despite not having quite enough stamina to go through the full work day in the shop, Thorax was still feeling restless after spending most of the past week cooped up in their room and looked for something productive to do. Remembering Fluttershy’s advice to have the cloths and blankets that made up Thorax’s makeshift sleeping nest cleaned then, Thorax set about dismantling the nest and sat most of the afternoon in the bathroom with a washbasin giving the cloths a well-needed cleaning before hanging them to dry. He neglected to plan ahead enough to ensure the cloths would all be dry enough to reform the nest in time for bed that evening though, so upon realizing this, Spike pulled out one of the sleeping bags they had obtained for if and when they left Vanhoover and set that out for Thorax to sleep in…only to watch with amusement as Thorax proceeded to bunch it into a loose shape of his sleeping nest and curl up atop to sleep.
Spike watched him with a wistful grin as he proceeded to set up the window seat as his usual sleeping space himself. “It’s nice to see you’re feeling so much better, Thorax,” he said aloud.
Though he had his eyes closed and ready to drift off to sleep, Thorax grinned. “It’s good to be feeling better,” he observed aloud in return. When Spike didn’t reply but sensed the dragon was still watching him, he opened his eyes slightly to peek at the dragon. “You seem troubled,” he observed, sensing the dragon’s emotions.
Spike sighed and nodded as he heaved himself up onto the window seat. “Just been thinking about what we discussed when Fluttershy left…about whether or not we want to leave Vanhoover.”
Thorax was quiet for a moment. “I still want to stay, Spike,” he said softly. “I know there’s no logical reason to at this point, not when it could put us at risk, but…” he trailed off, looking thoughtful. “…I don’t know how to explain it. I just feel like…this is the place we need to be at…at least for a little longer still.”
Spike was quiet for a long moment, but then to Thorax’s mild surprise, he nodded in agreement. “I feel that too.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure how or why…maybe it was just the sight of seeing you working back in the shop today that heartened me or what…but I feel like that, despite the odds…we’re going to be okay staying here…for a while longer still at least.”
Thorax straightened. “So we’re staying?” he prompted hopefully.
Spike chuckled. “Guess so.”
“Good,” Thorax said, and laid back down for the night. “See you in the morning then.”
Spike watched the changeling wistfully again for a moment, glad to have his friend healthy and around still. “Yeah, you too,” he said before settling in for the night himself.