“And you have no idea where he might have gone?”
“No,” answered Nosey numbly as she stared at the hospital floor, using her hooves to pull the blanket she’d been given around herself tighter, her horn not having recovered enough for her to do it telekinetically.
“He didn’t say anything at all about what he was planning on doing after he’d finished questioning you?” continued the guard, one eyebrow raised as he glanced at her over the top of his notepad, quill held at the ready.
The skeptical tone in his voice made Nosey flinch. She wasn’t so out of it that she couldn’t recognize the irony of the situation – she’d interviewed plenty of ponies over the course of her career, and knew that gathering information often meant pushing a reluctant witness – but she’d never fully appreciated how it felt to be on the other side of this exchange before now. “No.”
The guard opened his mouth to continue, but another voice beat him to the punch before he could. “Interrogated,” snapped a female voice that was only slightly warmer than a frozen lake.
The guard blinked, turning his attention to the middle-aged unicorn mare with the deep blue mane and tail, dark gray coat, and crossword puzzle cutie mark. “Ma’am?”
“You said that criminal ‘questioned’ my daughter,” continued Wordsy Windbag, telekinetically shoving the cupful of hot cocoa into Nosey’s hooves as she got right in the guard’s face. “The proper term is that he ‘interrogated’ her. Or perhaps ‘terrorized’ her. Or even ‘tortured’ her. Are you writing those down?”
Frowning, the guard pulled his notepad away before Wordsy could look at what he’d scribbled on it. “Ma’am, please. Our focus is on tracking down Commander Silhouette so that we can ascertain exactly what happened-”
“You know what happened!” growled Wordsy, stepping forward until she was nose-to-nose with the guard. “That maniac abused, attacked, and assaulted my daughter!” Raising a hoof, she jabbed the guard’s armor. “And where do you get off calling that fiend ‘commander’ anyway?! Nosey told you an hour ago that Princess Luna stripped him of his rank when they were in Vanhoover!”
The guard bristled. “First of all, ma’am, I’m going to need you to step back. Second of all, there’ve been no orders from the princesses with regard to Commander Silhouette’s rank changing. And third of all, it’s because the prior contact that your daughter had with the commander back in Vanhoover was – by her own admission – hostile that we need more information before we can draw any firm conclusions about what happened this morning, especially since the only other eyewitness is currently unable to give testimony.”
Nosey couldn’t hold back a choked sob at that, causing Wordsy’s face to darken as she began to lay into the guard. “You atrocious, contemptible, detestable, reprehensible, vile-”
But her tirade of insults was interrupted as a new voice cut in. “Honey, maybe I should talk to the guard for a moment?”
Furious, Wordsy rounded on the newcomer, a unicorn stallion with a pale green coat, a blond mane and tail that were both cut short, and his cutie mark depicting several colorful pills. “Pill, if you’d heard what this…this…disgrace was saying about our daughter…!”
Adjusting his glasses, Pill Bug gently but firmly interposed himself between Wordsy and the guard, smiling as he put a hoof around the latter. “I’m terribly sorry about my wife. She hasn’t been getting enough vitamin D lately,” he explained as he gently began guiding the guard back down the hospital hallway. “Also, I think our daughter’s iron levels are low again. She had that problem all the time as a child; never would finish her peas. I’ve got some iron supplements here with me and they’ll perk her right up, but they take a little time to kick in. Do you think we could have Nosey give you that statement later?”
The guard frowned, looking ready to protest. “Actually, I really need-”
But Pill Bug kept right on going. “You know, you look a little tense. Do you get enough B vitamins in your diet? Those are really important for reducing anxiety. Maybe some chamomile if you’d prefer that? Obviously tablets are better, but I think they have it in tea form around here somewhere…” His voice faded out as he guided the guard around the corner.
Huffing, Wordsy sat down next to her daughter, fussing with her blanket. “Honestly, the nerve of that guard! Acting like that ‘commander’ of his is the real victim here, I swear!”
“They don’t want the embarrassment,” murmured Nosey as she stared into her cocoa, her voice a dull monotone. “Everypony knows that the Royal Guard was no help when Nightmare Moon came back, or when the changelings invaded, or when the princesses vanished last year. Having one of their own go bad would make them look even worse, so they’re desperate to avoid having that be the case.”
“That doesn’t mean they get to make it sound like what happened is your fault!” growled Wordsy. “Of all the backward, cowardly, feckless-”
“Maybe it was…”
“-underhoofed, unprincipled, unscrupulous-, wait, what?” Blinking as she finally registered what her daughter had just said, Wordsy’s anger was replaced with concern in an instant. “No! Nosey, sweetheart, look at me!” Gently putting a hoof under the younger mare’s chin, Wordsy gently raised her head until she was looking her in the eyes. “Absolutely none of this is your fault! Zero, zilch, zip!”
Nosey’s lip quivered, a fresh round of tears filling her eyes. “…I pushed him…”
Wordsy blinked, tilting her head. “What?”
“Silhouette,” explained Nosey. “I knew that mentioning Princess Luna would set him off. Everytime she came up, he went completely to pieces. So when Line started talking about her, I thought…I thought that maybe if I kept the conversation going, it would drive Silhouette over the edge, and I’d be able to escape.” A small plop could be heard as a tear ran down her cheek, falling into her cocoa. “And because of that, Line is…is…”
She couldn’t finish as her mother wrapped her into a hug, letting Nosey weep as she rocked her.
They were still like that when Pill Bug returned a few minutes later, sitting on Nosey’s other side and silently joining in the embrace. It was only when Nosey, temporarily out of tears, broke the hug that he spoke up. “I got the guard to agree that now wasn’t a good time to take your statement. He’ll come back later in the evening.”
“I can’t do it this evening,” sniffled Nosey. “I need to sit down with Princess Luna then.”
“Sweety, you can’t still be thinking of going to that interview,” protested Wordsy. “Not after what just happened.”
“It’s what Line wanted,” insisted Nosey, her voice taking on the stubborn tone she’d always used whenever her parents had tried to talk her out of something. “Even after we had that fight, and I said all those horrible things to him, he still wanted me to be the one to talk to her, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
Over her head, Pill and Wordsy shared a worried look, but knew better than to push the issue with the state Nosey was in. “Alright, sweetheart,” murmured Wordsy.
“I’m sure you’ll make him proud,” smiled Pill.
Nosey managed a wan smile of her own at that, before taking a breath, sitting up a little straighter as she looked at her dad. “Has there been any change in how he’s doing?”
Pill’s smile faltered. “Sweety, it’s only been a few hours. They’re still trying all sorts of things.”
“Dad, c’mon…” Putting her cocoa down, Nosey waved a hoof at her cutie mark. “What are the doctors saying?”
Pill Bug licked his lips. “You really shouldn’t be worrying about that right now,” he pleaded. But Nosey kept staring at him, and after several seconds he sighed, looking away. “He’s not responding as well as they’d hoped. Right now, they can keep his heart beating and his lungs working, but other than that…”
“Oh…”
Wincing at the heartbroken tone in her daughter’s voice, Wordsy plastered a smile on her face as she put a foreleg around Nosey. “Hey, it’s not all bad news. When I was getting you that cocoa, I overheard a nurse say that Princess Celestia herself is doing everything she can to help. Supposedly she’s called in some sort of specialist!”
“Has she talked to his wife?” The question had barely left Nosey’s lips when she realized that she hadn’t heard anything about the rest of Line’s family. “Has anypony even told her what happened? We…we came right here from my building, I didn’t even think to ask-”
“She knows,” interjected Wordsy quickly. “She knows, sweetheart. I saw her a little while ago, while you were being bandaged up.”
“What…” Nosey needed a second before she was able to ask her next question. “What about his kids?”
“They’re still in school right now,” murmured her mother. “Two of the Royal Guard are going to pick them up as soon as classes end and bring them here.”
“And maybe by that time the princess’s specialist will have arrived,” added Pill. “Line could be well on the way to recovery by the time his children even hear about this.”
But Nosey didn’t seem to be listening at that point, putting her cocoa down as she staggered to her hooves. “I should go talk to her…tell her how sorry I am for this…”
Both of her parents were at her side in an instant. “Nosey, that’s not a good idea right now,” cautioned her father. “You’ve just been through a terrible shock, you don’t need to put yourself through anything else at the moment.”
Wordsy nodded. “And you’ll need to save your strength for when you talk to Princess Luna tonight, right?”
“I should have told him to run.” As if deaf to what her parents were saying, Nosey looked down the empty hallway, her eyes haunted. “I should have told him to run and get help as soon as I had the chance. Maybe then-”
“Nosey, you can’t do this to yourself.” On the surface Wordsy’s voice was made of steel, with only a slight tremor to betray that she was begging rather than ordering. “There’s no way to know what would have happened if you’d done that. It might have made things worse.”
“Not to mention that Line would never have run away, even if you’d told him to.” Gently guiding Nosey back down onto the bench with the help of his wife, Pill gave his daughter a small smile. “One way or another, once he knew that you were in trouble, he was going to come charging in.”
“…”
Silence fell then, but it only lasted a few seconds before Wordsy couldn’t bear it anymore. “Nosey…what happened in Vanhoover?”
Pill gave his wife a sharp look. “Wordsy…”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” continued Wordsy, not taking her eyes off of her daughter. “I don’t want to pry, especially right now. It’s just…we didn’t even know you were back until the Royal Guard came to fetch us this morning, and then you say that you met the pony who attacked you while you were there, that Princess Luna demoted him, and that he has some sort of grudge against someone you were interviewing out there.” She shrugged helplessly. “It’s befuddling, confusing, disconcerting…”
“Maybe we should all find some lunch first,” cut in Pill. “I bet they have some grapefruit around here somewhere. The high vitamin C count helps with healing injuries, fighting off infection-”
“-and absorbing iron,” finished Nosey with a small laugh, shaking her head. “It’s okay, Dad. Mom’s right. I know this must have been awful for you both, especially with how it all just came out of nowhere like this. I owe you an explanation.”
“Only if you feel up to it.” Wordsy wrapped a hoof around her daughter’s.
Her father repeated the gesture with her other hoof. “We do want to know what’s going on,” he admitted. “But not if it makes it harder for you to recover.”
“No.” Taking a deep breath, Nosey sat up straighter. “No. I want to talk about it. I think…I think I need to.”
Neither of her parents said anything, letting her go at her own pace.
For several minutes Nosey was silent, trying to sort it all out in her own head. Tall Tale. Sonata. The dragon. Vanhoover. Aria. The sea monsters. The camp ponies. Xiriel. The ghouls. The princesses. Silhouette.
And Lex.
“I went to Tall Tale to write a pony interest story about how it was recovering after the Elemental Bleeds,” she began at last. “While I was there, I met a stallion…”