//------------------------------// // Super cool // Story: Johns // by Cackling Moron //------------------------------// Celestia had not really let go of me since finding me. Or had I not let go of her? Possibly a bit of both. This had initially manifested in the tail-around-the-leg for the walk to the palace - which was very nice and fancy, I must say - and once we’d arrived and settled in it became me kind of sitting squashed in front of her against a table as the two of us did our best to share a seat. Not exactly comfortable, but she meant well. The tea was nice, too. As was chatting with people who weren’t trying to have a look inside my skull or pulling me around like a ragdoll. These were positives. We’d ended up in some rather nice, moderately-sized reception room of some kind. I am still not down on palace nomenclature, despite spending my time shuttling between and sleeping in two of them. Rooms are mostly just rooms to me. Still, it’s very fancy. And everything is crystal! Even the teapot. Classy. Everyone was unfortunately treating me as though I was made of glass. Kept getting glances in case whatever had been said last might somehow damage my delicate sensibilities. Damnit, can we just - can we ignore all that, please? I know it’s what I’m doing! Fucking well in the past! Already over the horizon! Water off a duck’s back! Means nothing to me. Let’s just talk about the weather. I’m fine. “John, why do you keep tapping everything?” Celestia asked, snapping me out of that little bit of fuming and reminding me that I had, indeed, been periodically tapping my knuckle against the table to see if it was real or not. Oops. Didn’t think anyone had noticed me doing that. “Oh, sorry. Just checking. Don’t mind me.” Just in case, you know? She leaned in over my shoulder so she could look me in the eye. “Checking what?” She asked. “The construction of the table. It’s a quality table,” I said, tapping it again. Celestia held the look enough for me to not be able to, and I ended up staring down at my teacup. She then moved in closer and said quietly enough that the others couldn’t hear her and asked: “Are you alright?” Gah. Shivers. Again. Everytime. It’s the voice I’m telling you. “I’m fine,” I said, giving her a pat on one of the legs she had wrapped around my middle. Time to move things along! I looked across the table at the other two. “So! Twilight and Cadence! Two months, eh? What did you two get up?” They looked at me for a moment as though I might have been mad, then to one another as though to check that they’d both heard the same thing. After silently confirming that, yes, they had, their attention was back on me. “Looking for you,” Twilight said. Not really the answer I’d been hoping form. “Oh, so nothing fun then?” I asked, turning to Cadence, hoping that maybe this might yield results. She didn’t meet my eye. “No…” she said. Well shit. Whatever enjoyment I was having from the tea and conversation - which I am always a fan of, usually; a finer combination you’d be hard-pressed to find - soured more quickly than I might have liked owing to the mounting impression that I was in some way damaged and being handled gently, or else pissing in everybody else’s cornflakes somehow. Not like I died, right? I mean, I almost did that one time and I came out of that okay. Made me the man I am today. Literally. And I’m fine. Barely even anything happened. It’s barely worth mentioning! So why do they keep looking at me like that? To my immense and lasting shame I may have allowed myself to get a little bit sullen and withdrawn as a result, leading to the whole thing coming to a soggy, unhappy conclusion not long after where it was agreed that everyone should go to bed. Why weren’t we having fun, damnit? I was left to hang around Celestia’s room - where I would be sleeping, obviously - while she was off somewhere talking to the other two. About what? Who knew. Probably me. Urgh. Not being particularly tired I took advantage of the bedroom’s balcony to stand and stare wistfully out across the landscape. I gave the handrail a tap, too. Seemed alright to me. Maybe everything was fine! I leaned over the edge a little bit to see if any parts of the building looked to be missing but I couldn’t see anything. “What are you doing?” Jesus Christ! At least this time I wasn’t so far over I was in danger of falling, but still!  “Ack! Man leaning here! Dangerous! You know, she did that, too?” I asked as Celestia, grinning, came and joined me. “Who did what?” She asked me. “Hmm? Nothing,” I said. Celestia just frowned, but said no more. A wing settled around my shoulder and pulled me in. I’d rather missed that. “What are you thinking about?” She asked, after some happy minutes of companionable silence spent staring at nothing in particular. “You know, whenever you ask me that my mind goes blank,” I said. Which was true. “Implying that it’s ever not?” “Oh! Brutal! Fair though. Uh, actually, there was something I kind of wanted to ask you,” I said, something bubbling up to the surface in my brain again. “Go on.” “Have you been up here the whole time? The whole time I was missing, I mean,” I asked. “I came a little later, once it looked like yours and Twilight’s trip was going long. I didn’t know why until I got here,” Celestia said. “So not the whole time, then?” “Most of it. Why are you asking?” “You’re not going to get in trouble for just stepping out for two months, are you?” Seemed like a legitimate concern to me. It had been nibbling away at me for most of the evening, now, having just popped into my head out of nowhere. I mean, it’s a legit concern, right? One of two rulers just up and leaves for two months? That can’t be good. “These were exceptional circumstances!” She said. I shrugged. “Eh, it was just me…” Probably shouldn’t have said that. Celestia looked like I’d slapped her. Oops. Now I felt bad… “Don’t say that. You’re important. Luna understood and was more than capable of covering in my absence. Anything that required my urgent attention I would have returned to deal with, but nothing did. Anything that required my input could be dealt with at a distance.” “Ah, well, that’s good then.” “You shouldn’t think you’re not important. You are. And not just to me.” I think everyone’s getting a bit emotional. Well, everyone but me. I don’t get emotional. Because I’m carved from wood. “Worse things have happened, though,” I said, again not really thinking through what it was that I was actually saying. Seriously, can you tamp down on that maybe? You’d allowed to wait a second before making noise. “You were kidnapped!” Celestia said, aghast.    “Well yes a little bit I suppose but I wouldn’t have done it if I knew it would have caused so much fuss.” For a second it looked like I was about to get an earful from Celestia for that one but she visibly calmed herself down and smiled at me instead, which was somehow worse. “Can you tell me what happened?” She asked. And she asked me so pleasantly that I couldn’t really say no to her. So I deflected instead. “You guys not have any idea?” I asked.  Given they’d managed to track me down and breach wards and all that they must have figured it out at least a little, surely? “Oh, we’re fairly certain we know what happened. I just thought I should ask you and not assume. We could always be wrong,” she said. Fair play. And now she’s got me in a box. Oh well. Bite the bullet.  “It was, uh, that evil queen I got told about. Turns out not defeated. Just diminished? Umbra, yeah. Odd lady.” “We suspected as much. It was always a possibility. Still amazes me she was able to remain so close and so well hidden…” she said, her expression briefly turning dark as she looked out over the balcony towards the city - or are we seriously still calling it an empire? “Yeah she’s, uh, I don’t really know. I had a very strange time, in retrospect,” I said. “What happened? What did she do?” Celestia asked with a very fine mixture of concern, curiosity and what was probably the beginnings of wrath. “Nothing important,” I said. Again, I seemed to have said the wrong thing here. “John, we are going to have to talk about what happened,” she said. “Oh no I get that I just - do we have to do it right now?” I found myself being turned about by wingtip so that we were now facing. Urgh. A talk. “Why are you putting this off?” Celestia asked. “I’m not, I just don’t want to talk about it right now,” I said. There is a difference! “Why not?” She asked. I shrugged. “I just don’t want to. There’s no deeper reason. I just don’t want to. Okay?” I don’t want to talk about it because it’s a big deal! It’s a big deal and I’ll be expected to have answers to questions that are more than one word and which aren’t jokes. I’ll be expected to think about the answers first and for them to have meaning! And she’ll look at me seriously and say serious things and Twilight’ll probably be there too and she’ll be nodding and everything will be serious and it won’t be fun at all. If I make jokes they’ll be mad at me! That’s not - I can’t do that! Should do it though. Just get it done with. If I get out of the way everything can go back to the way it was. And that’s good. I had everything set out exactly in a lovely way that was perfect and wonderful or as close to perfect and wonderful as can be imagined. I was comfortable, damnit. I was fine! Nothing needed to have anything happen to it! I was comfortable! The big problem with things like this is that everyone expects you to wrap yourself around them. For them to have some kind of effect on you. Or to talk about them. Or to have feelings about the things that happened. They expect you to react and progress. I don’t have feelings! I’m just here! I don’t progress! I’m here! Fixed point! Here! That’s fine! I’m fine! And I just want to stay right here, thank you. I’m fine! It was just a thing! Locked room for two months! Fucking weirdo illusions! Being able to remember bits and pieces of the old John’s past. So what! That’s not a big deal. It barely registered on me! Can’t we just move on back to where we were before? I liked it there! I had a niche! I had a, uh, what’s that thing called where a wheel has worn like a gouge in the mud? Tip of my tongue, tip of my tongue... Celestia sighed. “Okay. We can forget about this until tomorrow. But it is important, John, you are going to have to talk to me about it.” “I know, I know,” I said, nodding until one of her wings came in to just tip my head so that I had to look at her. “Promise me?” Well shit she’s got me now. “Promise,” I mumbled. And she smiled, and I felt better while still not feeling great. Probably about the best I could hope for for that evening, really. What a mess. Why can’t everything just be entirely uneventful forever and why can’t life not ask anything of me? Patently unfair. I’m being singled out here. Not long after this we got into bed, turned the lights off - magic lights! - and turned in. I did not sleep very well. Or at all, in fact. Pretended to, until I knew Celestia was asleep, then I just - quietly, carefully - propped myself up to watch her. There were two reasons for me doing this. First, she’s just kind of nice to watch sleep, honestly, and I’d missed it. It’s difficult to fully articulate but it just makes me feel safe and happy seeing her like that. Like we’re both comfortable and shit’s great.  That’s weird, I know, but there you go.  Secondly and mostly though, I was looking for any sign that she might be, you know, not her. Little clues. Giveaways. A flicker of a disguise not holding. Something that’d tell me it wasn’t really here and I wasn’t really there and it wasn’t over. Didn’t see any. Which is good. I think it’s all done with now. Think we’re finished with that whole episode. I think? I mean, if I wasn’t I wouldn’t know, but I think so. Right? Not that I care either way, obviously. If I’m actually out that’s gravy, I’ll take that. That’d be the best. But if it turns out I’m being strung along again and I have to keep waiting to be rescued, well, I’ll do that too. I’ll keep going regardless. I’d be fine. Anything could happen to me and I’d shrug it off. I’m indestructible, me. I’m fine. Plough through anything and come out the other side completely unscratched. Watch me. Fucking watch me. I’m fine.