Soarin's numerous transitions to and from consciousness were sporadic. It was as if the world around him had undergone a time lapse every time he closed his eyes. He vaguely remembered Apple Bloom cradling his head in her forelegs as she pleaded with him to speak to her. That was when his consciousness slipped away from him again. He had next awakened to a familiar female voice shouting in dismay, "His wing! How did this happen?"
"Princess... Princess Twilight?" Soarin cracked his eyes, but all the forms and colors around him just seemed to blur together.
"Oh, good," The Princess sighed. "You're awake. From the way Apple Bloom was talking, I thought you'd be... Soarin? Soarin, look at me. Open your eyes. Soarin!" And Soarin had slipped away once again. And when he regained sapience, he felt a flat surface trundling beneath him, the familiar creaking of axles and the metallic whine of poorly greased bearings rasping in his ears.
"Quit jostling him around!" demanded a voice that was unmistakably Apple Bloom's. "Yer gonna kill him."
"No, it won't kill him, but it could make his injuries worse. Someone's going to need to hop in the cart and help him keep his wing still until we get to the hospital."
"I'll do it," volunteered another voice. "The poor thing..." Soarin felt a warm hoof gently caressing the side of his face. The wounded pegasus half-opened his eyes to see Rarity smiling sympathetically down at him. "We've got you, darling," she cooed. It was sweet, that soft, nurturing voice of hers.
"Are you in any pain?" Rainbow Dash broke in. She hovered into his vision, her magenta eyes wide with concern.
"Look at his wing!" Apple Bloom answered for him, in a tone that had been edged with distress. "Wouldn't you be in pain?"
"Hey now, calm down squirt. I'm just seeing if he's coherent enough to talk."
"On a scale of one to ten--" Soarin croaked, but the cart he had been laid out on must have hit a pothole in the road. A wave of excruciating pain exploded in his wing, and he let fly with a clenched stream of expletives.
"I didn't know those were numbers," Pinkie Pie mused, and then Soarin passed out again.
The next thing Soarin knew, he was laying face down on an operating table. It sounded garbled, but he thought he heard an unfamiliar voice say, "Prep him." He felt the sting of a tiny needle penetrating his foreleg, and every muscle in his body began to relax. Relief washed over him, and that was when he could finally sleep without the constant interruption of his agony rousing him.
Soarin dreamed of his glory days that night. He flew in perfectly synchronized formation alongside his squad until he finally blundered during one particular stunt. It was a deviation of speed he had made during a sharp turn along the stadium wall. It was a mistake that threw off their formation, but it was so slight only Spitfire seemed to notice.
The captain had given him an earful that night, but that was nothing new. She seemed to focus more on his mistakes than anyone else's. He counted two miscalculations Blaze had made that same night, yet Spitfire had let out all her frustrations on him.
Despite the frequency of his flukes however, the fans loved him. Soarin was the goof of the group. His mistakes were always followed by improvisations that kept the fans entertained, while at the same time convincing them that it was all a part of the act. It set him apart from the others, and it had unwittingly made him the star of the show. His team didn't like it. They had gotten the notion in their heads that Soarin was purposely upstaging them. To the fans, Soarin was the silly, fun-loving goof that loved nothing more than entertaining them with his wacky antics, but to his team, he was the glory hog.
Spitfire, however, had the eyes of an experienced flyer; she could spot inadequacy from a mile away. She could smell ineptitude from upwind, and Soarin reeked of it. To her he was always the outsider; he was the maverick; he didn't deserve to be in the team, didn't deserve to wear the uniform. And perhaps, Soarin thought when he looked back on it, she was right.
Soarin was looking at a white ceiling when he opened his eyes, the sterile scent of his hospital room filling his nostrils. Looming over him at his bedside was a metallic rack, from which hung a bag of clear fluid. When he looked down he realized there was an IV drip in his foreleg. His wing was secured in a splint and tightly bandaged to his side.
He had woken up in a hospital with his wing bandaged up... An eerie sense of deja vu was coming over him. It was the Rainbow Falls incident all over again. Only, it wasn't Rainbow Dash that was with him this time. Slowly, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, and he noticed Apple Bloom curled up at the end of his bed, her sides softly expanding and contracting with her silent little snores. "Kid?" Her body swayed about as he tugged at his sheet to rouse her. "Hey, you okay?"
The filly's ears twitched. Her head perked up, eyes wide. "Yer awake!" She scrambled to her hooves and launched herself into him. Soarin had to plant his hooves behind him to keep from being thrown back on his broken wing.
"I'm awake," he agreed, patting the filly on the head. "How long have I been out?"
"About sixteen hours."
"Heck of a power nap," Soarin commented. "How did I get here?"
"Ah rounded up some friends to help me get you to the hospital. You don't remember?"
"I remember," Soarin said. "I was hoping that was a dream."
Apple Bloom cocked her head to the side. "Why?"
"Because, I don't want anyone knowing about what happened last night. If Applejack finds out, she could... Wait, where's Applejack? Is she home?"
"She ain't gonna be home until tomorrow, remember?"
"Oh, good," Soarin sighed. "There's still time."
"Time fer what?"
"Time for me to talk to everyone who helped me. I don't want Rainbow Dash or Rarity or anyone else letting Applejack know about what happened... How much have you divulged about the incident last night, and how many ponies know about it?"
"Divulged?" Apple Bloom said curiously. "Ah pretty much told everyone the whole story... That you saved mah life. And Ah'm sure the whole town knows about it by now."
"Everyone?" Soarin echoed, and the door to his room burst open.
Pinkie Pie was looking at him from the doorway, her eyes wide, round and unblinking like little blue saucers in her head.
Soarin looked at her, perplexed. "Can I help you?"
The impulsive mare suddenly turned and ran off shrieking down the hospital hallway.
"Well, that was weird," Soarin commented.
"When it comes to Pinkie Pie, it'd be weird if she didn't do somethin' weird," Apple Bloom offered with a shrug.
"So, Pinkie Pie knows... And I think I remember Twilight being there as well. What did you mean when you said everyone in the whole town knows?"
"Pinkie Pie's probably spread the word around town by now, knowing her."
Soarin face-hoofed. "Great. No point in trying to keep it a secret now. Next thing you're gonna tell me is that she went to the media about it."
Apple Bloom fidgeted nervously. "She might have informed the local paper about it."
Soarin stiffened his posture and said, "I know you're kidding... Please be kidding."
"Soarin, you were incredible!" insisted the filly. "Ah watched you fight those things off from mah window. Ah never saw nothin' like that in all mah life. You were like some kinda super hero. Why wouldn't you want mah sister to know?" Apple Bloom then leaned in and added, "You know, yer probably gonna score you some tail for this."
"Okay, first of all, you're like, five. Don't talk like that. Second, do you even know what that means?"
"Ah'm nine, for yer information," Apple Bloom corrected him. "And, it means yer gonna get lots'a hugs and smooches, right?"
"Sure, we'll leave it at that."
"What's the big deal?"
"The big deal is that I don't want Applejack to know about this. She's gonna flip when she finds out." Soarin sighed, laid back against his pillow, then stared up at the ceiling. "It's unavoidable now, I guess."
"You were brave, Soarin," Apple Bloom insisted. "Applejack would want to know about this." She then laid down and nuzzled up against him. "Ah never got the chance to thank you, by the way. Ah don't know what would'a happened to me if you hadn't been there to protect me."
"You're alive, kid," Soarin replied. "That's all the thanks I need. You didn't go back home after you brought me here, did you?"
"Ah stayed here with you."
"The hospital staff just let you do that? Don't most places like this have a strict policy about overnight visitors?"
"They tried to shoo me away. Rarity told me Ah could stay with her and Sweetie Belle for the night, but Ah didn't want to leave you here all alone."
"How'd you convince them to let you stay?"
"Ah told em we was family, and that Ah wasn't gonna leave you. Ohana and all that."
"Didn't your sister teach you not to lie?"
"Ah told em you was family, dummy; that ain't no lie. Ah done told ya before, family are those you love and cherish. And Ah love you to pieces, you crazy, stupid, hardheaded stallion."
Soarin had to clear his throat before he spoke. It was all he could do to keep his voice from sounding husky. "Oh, stop, you're gonna make me all misty." He tried to sound facetious, but deep down, the filly's words moved him.
"When you dumped that perfume on yer head, Ah had thought you'd gone plum insane."
Soarin smirked at that. "Hey, I did what I did to save your butt as much as I did it to save mine. Whatever those timberwolves could have done to me would have paled in comparison to what your sister would do if I had let something happen to you."
"I told you!" a voice from the hallway cheered.
Soarin and Apple Bloom both jumped with a start as their eyes snapped to the doorway, where they noticed Pinkie Pie as well as Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity gawking at them.
"I was the only one who believed her," Pinkie Pie taunted them. "But everyone else was like, 'No way.' "
"Are you saying all that stuff was true?" Rainbow Dash broke in, her jaw slack with incredulity.
"Ya mean, y'all didn't believe me?" Apple Bloom frowned, affronted.
Twilight Sparkle raised her hoof in a placating manner. "It's not that we didn't believe you, it's just... I don't know, it's just a hard story to swallow." Her skeptical eyes met with Soarin's. "So, all of this is true? You actually fought off a pack of timberwolves all by yourself?"
"What about the part where you doused yourself in the perfume to lead them away from Apple Bloom?" Rarity had to know, her azure eyes wide with wonderment.
Rainbow Dash nodded eagerly. "Yeah, and the part where they were on fire? And you took em all down with a scythe like some wannabe Specter Knight."
"Specter what?" Soarin's eyes shot down to Apple Bloom. "How much did you tell them?"
"Just the parts that Ah saw from mah window. The fire part was really cool to watch, by the way."
"I don't know why everyone is having such a hard time believing it. The paper was quick enough to believe me," Pinkie Pie said.
"The Ponyville Press would believe you if you told them Princess Celestia was putting chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay," Rainbow Dash argued.
Soarin peeled the blanket away and sat up. "Nothing that happened last night was planned. It was all just spur the moment." He began to fidget with the strip of tape holding his IV in place.
Twilight Sparkle began to approach him. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I need to get back to work. I'm going home."
"Not with that busted wing, you're not," Twilight Sparkle insisted. It almost sounded like a demand.
"Applejack and the others are going to be returning from out of town tomorrow. I don't want them to come home to a busted front door. The door to Granny's bedroom may need to be replaced as well. There's also the matter of my barn - those monsters turned my place upside down trying to get to us."
"Soarin, don't worry about it," Apple Bloom said. "We'll just drape some canvas over the doorway of the house for now. It'll look tacky, but we'll get everything taken care of once mah sister and brother get back home. You know how much they love a home project."
"Home project?" Soarin waved the notion away with a dismissive hoof. "I was just going to hire some contractors."
"Contractors?" Apple Bloom sighed. "How lazy are you?"
"Very."
The filly rolled her eyes. "Granny Smith was right: You can take the boy out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the boy."
"When did she say that about me?"
"She says that about you all the time."
"Enough bickering," Rarity broke in between them. "Soarin, darling, I don't try to nag, but it would really benefit you to get some more rest."
"You should probably wait until the doctor gives you the okay to check out," recommended Rainbow Dash. "I've been hospitalized for a busted wing before. It'll heal up in no time."
"And the food here is delicious!" Pinkie Pie incentivized. "What stallion in his right mind would skip out on the chance to get in on all this free gourmet hospital cuisine?"
"Nurse, have you been washing the bedpans in the cafeteria sink again?" Came a voice from down the hall.
The pink mare grinned at Soarin sheepishly as she extended a hind leg and pushed the door shut behind her. "You didn't hear that."
Soarin hung his head with a reluctant sigh. "If the princess demands it, I guess..."
"Don't think of it as a demand." Said Twilight Sparkle, smiling amiably. "And don't think of me as your princess. Just think of me as a concerned friend."
"Yeah, it couldn't hurt to just chill here for a while." Rainbow Dash fidgeted coyly with her hooves. "And, in the meantime, why don't you tell us what happened last night? Seriously dude, I have to hear this."
"Ah already told y'all what happened," Apple Bloom complained. "Ah didn't realize y'all would be callin' me a liar behind mah back."
Rainbow Dash ruffled her mane. "Take it easy, squirt. I believe you. I just want to hear the unabridged version. You know, from Soarin's perspective."
Pinkie Pie already had a bag of popcorn ready.
"Where did you get that?" Rarity inquired.
"The cafeteria." Pinkie offered her the bag. "I've been carrying it around in my mane for safe keeping. Want some?"
Rarity recoiled with reserved revulsion. "No thank you, darling. 'Bedpan and mare hair' isn't my flavor."
Pinkie shrugged. "Suit yourself."
Soarin didn't know what to say, looking around him at all the wide eyes brimming with eagerness to hear his story. Being surrounded by a company of ponies that were legitimately interested in what he had to say felt strange to him. Nice - but strange. "I'm not sure where to begin..."
"Begin at the beginning so we'll know how it began," advised Pinkie Pie. The others began to close in around him, all the better to hear him.
Soarin pondered. He scratched the rough shadow growing from his unshaven face and said, "Well, I guess it started when I noticed how late it was getting. Apple Bloom hadn't come home yet. Last I had seen her, we were having porridge together, and she was asking me if it'd be alright if she went to her friend's house after breakfast..."
Soarin had arrived to the part of the story where he had discovered the wolves clawing at the tree to get at Apple Bloom when the nurse let herself in. He continued unhindered with his tale as the mare with the red cross cutie mark checked the fluid bag on his rack, and her ears twitched with interest as she was jotting something down on a clipboard. She lifted her eyes from her work to regard Soarin with a sudden look of captivation.
Soon after, an earthpony wearing a doctor's coat poked his head in the room. "Nurse Redheart, did you get those fluid measurements?"
Every mare in the room, including the nurse, turned to shush him.
The doctor cocked an eyebrow.
"Uh, anyway, like I was saying," Soarin continued, "I had just finished securing the door behind me when one of the timberwolves smashed into it from the other side. I was so startled, I nearly tripped over my hooves. I turned and fled with Apple Bloom up the stairs while they continued to batter the door. From the way it had splintered inward with the first impact, I knew they'd be inside the house in a matter of seconds."
Apple Bloom was hugging herself as she recalled the encounter. "Ah was so scared, Ah was crying."
With a look of intense interest, the doctor seemed to gravitate toward Soarin's bedside, and he became the next addition to the audience, absentmindedly leaving the door open behind him.
"I managed to lead them as far away from Apple Bloom as I could, but it was so dark all I could see was their eyes. I stumbled blindly through the pasture, turning occasionally to take one down, then retreating again. My wing was busted and I couldn't fly. I knew that if I let them surround me I'd be done for sure."
A passerby stopped and peeked her head in the room before entering. Another that had noticed the amassing crowd soon followed. Then there was another, and another, and soon the room was packed almost to capacity.
"You don't know what fear is until you're being chased by flaming timberwolves. It was as if they were incapable of feeling pain."
"This is starting to get a little ridiculous," a skeptic said from somewhere within the room.
"It's true!" Apple Bloom insisted. "Ah seen the whole thing. Y'all who know me know Ah'm an Apple. We don't lie."
A wave of incoherent whispers began to wash over the throng.
"What happened after you led them to the field?" someone urged him on.
Soarin was becoming tired. He didn't know if it was whatever that substance was in his IV bag, or if the exhaustion from the previous night was beginning to catch up with him, but he was at the end of the story, and the crowd he had unwittingly drawn looked as if they might protest if he stopped. "I finished it," he said, the bags under his eyes deepening. "The burning blade on my scythe was a more than effective weapon against them. It wasn't too difficult, as there was only three of them left. One-by-one I slashed them to pieces, and their body parts burned to ashes where they fell. I drove the blade into the ground to put it out, I laid down, exhausted, and the next thing I knew I woke up here with Apple Bloom at the foot of my bed."
"That was when Ah unbarricaded mah door and ran to come check on him," Apple Bloom added. "Ah tried to get him up so Ah could walk him to the emergency room, but he wasn't moving, so Ah ran into town as fast as Ah could, to get help from as many of our friends as Ah could, and together we managed to cart him into town."
Soarin looked around at the crowd. "Where's Fluttershy? Isn't she usually with you guys when you're together."
"There wasn't enough time to get her," Apple Bloom explained. "She lives all the way out near the edge of the Everfree forest. Besides, after what had just happened, Ah didn't want to be anywhere near that place. Ah'm never goin' back there again."
Soarin's head swayed. "Yeah, doubt I'll be making any trips there myself in the near future. Not unless you did the other day."
"That didn't make sense, that last bit." Apple Bloom looked him over. "You feelin' alright, Soarin?"
The throng around Soarin's bed parted like a curtain for the doctor to step through. He didn't even need to inspect the exhausted stallion to realize what was wrong with him. There was but one quick cursory glance, and then, "I'm thinking that's it for story time, everyone. Soarin needs to get some rest."
Soarin felt grateful to the doctor for sparing him the awkward task of telling everyone to leave. In his weary state he was having difficulty thinking of a polite way to do it.
Some in the audience tried to ask him questions or speak with him, some of them regarding his story, others concerning his past career as a Wonderbolt. One stallion even went so far as to inquire about Spitfire, if she was truly as vile as she was being portrayed in the media for the past few weeks, and if everything he had said in his publicized interview with Trenderhoof was true.
Soarin's wing hurt, and he was still anxious over the matter of how Applejack would receive the news of the recent events. Spitfire was the furthest thing from his mind at that point. And he was tired, besides.
After the doctor had herded the onlookers out of the room, Soarin finally allowed himself to fall back into his bed. He immediately heard Rainbow Dash suck in a sharp gasp of air. "Soarin, you just landed on your broken wing!"
"Did I?" Soarin mused, yawning. He didn't even feel it. The doctor had made some adjustments to his IV before he had left. Perhaps that had something to do with it. Soarin looked up at the bag with a sleepy smile and reached out to give it a playful bat with his hoof. The clear liquid inside sloshed around. "They must be pumping me with the good stuff."
Twilight Sparkle carefully rolled him onto his side to prevent him from exacerbating his injury. "We're going to go ahead and let you rest. We'll come back to visit."
"And don't worry about Apple Bloom," Rarity chimed in. "She can stay with my sister and I until Applejack comes back home."
"Ah never agreed to that," Apple Bloom protested.
"It's a good idea. Go with her, AB. I don't want you cooped up in here. Go and..." Soarin was suddenly interrupted by an unbidden yawn. "Go have a little sleep over with your friend. It'll be good for you - get your mind off things."
Apple Bloom looked at him pitifully.
Rarity touched her on the shoulder with a consoling hoof and said, "It might be difficult for him to rest with you lingering over him, darling. And he's right, it's not good for you to confine yourself in here. When Applejack comes home tomorrow, we'll all come back and visit him together, I promise."
Apple Bloom said something in response, but Soarin didn't quite catch what it was. His acuity was beginning to slip away, and his eyelids were becoming too heavy to keep open. He yawned again. "Go on... Kid... Be good for Rarity."
Soarin once again dreamed of the past, but this time it was different. The dream was more lucid than any he had ever had. Spitfire was sitting in front of her fireplace when he had opened the door, a glass of brandy by her side, a book opened across her lap, and, strangely enough, between the two padded chairs, there was a shallow grave freshly dug. Soarin didn't know what to make of it.
Spitfire looked up and noticed him entering her study. "I figured you'd be coming by." She lifted her glass, and in the firelight the fine brown liquid turned white and powdery, as if the brandy had become ash in her hooves. She tipped the rim of her glass against her lips and made a face, as if the taste was unbearable, but she forced herself to swallow it anyway.
Soarin, unsettled, directed his gaze to the shallow grave before her. It was as if the floor boards had been ripped away to reveal the deep soil that made up the foundation under her home, which was odd upon realizing that the study was on the second floor, and that the estate had been built upon cloud, not earth. Despite all the questions the sight evoked, Soarin could only seem to put one into words. "This grave," he said, "Who's going to occupy it?"
Spitfire licked the ridge of her hoof and turned a page. That was when she looked up at him with the most disarmingly sweet smile Soarin had ever seen grace her face. She was beautiful when she smiled, which wasn't often. It caught him off guard. "Why, me, of course," she said. "And you're going to be the one to bury me."
The lights in his room had been dimmed when Soarin next opened his eyes. It was dark outside his window. The fluid in the bag hanging from his rack was almost depleted. He didn't want to dream anymore, so he just laid there, staring, waiting for the first light of dawn to shine on the horizon. The night always brought such strange dreams. Perhaps if he held out for the day, they wouldn't be so odd.