//------------------------------//
// Kindness 
// Story: Kindness and the Heart of Shadow 
// by Raven-Flight 
//------------------------------//

The water bowl was already half empty, and Fluttershy felt completely empty.  She didn’t know how long it had been since Sombra had come to her, since she was tortured in front of her friends, since she was stolen away to this awful room, since just about anything.  And just as bad, she didn’t know how long it would be before Sombra or anycreature at all might come to check on her.  She bent down to the water bowl and took the tiniest sip, really only a lick.

The food was a problem too.  Fluttershy had asked for fruits and she got them, but fruits are hard to ration out over indefinite time.  She had already eaten all the strawberries and bananas, since those would expire first.  The apples and especially the oranges she hoped to keep as long as she could.  There were a total of five pieces of fruit left, all softening but still edible, and she would have tried to eat just one every other day if she had any way of knowing when each day ended and the next began.

Fluttershy also wanted to wash her ear.  The puncture wound from Sombra’s fang felt crusty and wasn’t bleeding anymore, but she couldn’t tell without seeing it whether its intense itchiness was because it was healing or because it was infected.  She feared the latter, but she couldn’t spare the water to clean away the detritus and try to inspect it.

“Rarity, I hope you’ll join me for a long spa session after all this is over.  If you want to, that is.”  She could picture her friend standing there, and she cried because she knew it was just her imagination.  “Oh girls, where are you?”

Fluttershy laid herself down and tried to ignore the pain of her bruises.

A small, dark room from which only Sombra, apparently, could enter or exit.  Totally alone, no friends or creatures to care for anywhere around.  Nothing that made her who she was.  Now she was merely a weakened, broken body that was nothing more than a liability to herself and her friends.

“Why hadn’t I been more careful?  If Sombra’s attacking, they’re not going to have time to think about rescuing me.  They’re going to be sad and worried but stuck doing more important things, and I could have prevented all this if I’d just taken some precautions!”

She shut her eyes and tried to sleep—there was nothing else to do—but it just kept echoing from wall to wall in that little room.  Alone, alone, alone.  She couldn’t sleep.  Alone.  She couldn’t think.  Alone.  She couldn’t breathe.  Alone.  Alone.

…

There had been tears in his eyes.  Just before Sombra’s abuse had knocked her unconscious, Fluttershy saw the tears in Discord’s eyes.  She’d never seen him cry like that before.

“Maybe he never really loved you after all.”

Then why was he crying?  But if he did, then why wasn’t he here already, or at least trying to contact her?  Was Sombra lying when he said Discord hadn’t been detected in Equestria since then?  Did he really give up on Equestria and abandon it?  Abandon her?

It was Discord who had taught her to appreciate the unexpected, to be excited for the impossible made possible.  As she had gotten to know him and grow fond of his antics, she had felt herself changing.  It was still the same kindness, to be sure, but thanks to Discord’s influence, now it had begun to operate differently.  Where kindness before was meek, now it was bold, and confident, and brave.

But Fluttershy wasn’t feeling very brave right then.  She was feeling weary, and thirsty, and hungry, and alone.  For hoofsteps or a squeak or a drip or anything at all, she listened, but all she could hear was her own forlorn heartbeat.

Fluttershy drew in a shaky breath and fell asleep thinking how much she was craving a glass of chocolate milk.