//------------------------------// // #8 // Story: Bits and pieces // by Cackling Moron //------------------------------// In the Crystal Empire there was a hospital. It was also crystal. In the crystal hospital there was a room. In this room was the only human in the whole world. For something normally so big (at least by comparison to those around him) he looked awfully, terrifyingly small all of a sudden, swallowed by the bed they’d put him in and the covers they’d drawn over him. Two beds, actually, unclear how many blankets. Lots, apparently. In this crystal hospital, in this room, across these two beds and underneath this profusion of blankets, this unique specimen stirred. He’d stirred more than once since they’d found him - a promising sign, given the circumstances in which they’d found him - but so far the stirring hadn’t led to anything significant. This time it did. He stirred, he groaned, he rolled over and he opened his eyes. Normally, his reaction to opening his eyes onto a place he didn’t recognise would have been immediate anger and threat response, possibly breaking whatever was closest to hand. This time though his body ached too much for him to care, and by the time he’d acknowledged this the rest of his brain had been able to figure out that the room he was in was plainly some sort of hospital room. “Not dead yet, huh?” This finally got the attention of the others there with him. “You’re awake,” Twilight said with almost palpable relief. Paul squinted at her, still not quite with it, but then he recognised her and groaned, screwing his eyes shut. “Ugh, small one. Great. Why you? Where is Cozy?” “She-” “Dad!” Cozy came powering in from somewhere out of frame and through the air at full speed, blasting past Twilight and impacting on Paul hard enough to knock the beds back against the wall. Given that Paul was both an old man and an injured old man he reacted predictably to this. “Ow ow, child, ow, ow.” Cozy kept on hugging him regardless, remaining attached to where she’d latched. Twilight moved away a respectful distance, going and standing next to Cadence. Cadence was also present. She just wasn’t making herself especially obvious yet. Paul was so stricken with relief on finding Cozy whole and uninjured and (presumably) not in any trouble that, once he’d recovered from her landing on him, he unabashedly hugged her back. Didn’t even take issue with the dad thing, honestly hadn’t even noticed it enough that time to take issue with it. That she was here was enough. The two remained happily glued to one another for what wasn’t actually that long a time. Eventually, the hug loosened enough that they could actually look at one another, both smiling, Paul genuinely so for one of the very few times in his life, Cozy doing so with slightly watery, reddened eyes. A nice moment, really. Then Cozy’s smile went away and she whacked him in the chest, hard, right in a spot she could tell it would be noticed. Paul went ‘oof’, and after he went ‘oof’ he said: “What was that for?!” Cozy was most certainly not smiling now. “For being here! Nearly dying! What were you thinking?!” Paul wasn’t smiling anymore now either. Getting hoofed in the bruised ribs will have that effect, as will getting yelled at. “I was thinking I had to come and get you! So that’s what I did!” “Just going around showing my poster and yelling at ponies?!” “Yes!” “Why did you do that?!” “I thought you were in trouble! Or doing something that’d get you into trouble! You go running off all on your own without so much as a by-your-leave, getting your friends to give me the ‘She’s in the toilet’ story - what was I supposed to think?” “You weren’t supposed to know! It was a surprise! It was going to be fine!” “What was going to be fine? What were you doing? What were you thinking?!” “Should we step in?” Twilight asked quietly, still standing off to the side of the room, but Cadence (who she was directing this question towards) shook her head. “Let them get it out,” she said, sagely. There was the possibility she was an expert. Cozy fumed. “It was - it doesn’t matter! I had an idea and it turned out to be a bad one. But you weren’t meant to find out anyway! I was supposed to just come here and come back! You’d never know.” “Well I do know! I found out! And what the hell was I meant to do? Sit around? Thumb up my arse? I had to do something! It’s my job to look after you!” “I can look after myself! I’d have been fine! I am fine!” She had a point, she was fine, but Paul was not going to concede this. “You just as easily might not be! And I’m not - I can’t - I’m not going to let anything happen! Not when I can do something about it! Not to my child! My daughter! I don’t-” He cut himself off, feeling that he’d dug himself deep enough as it was, entirely unable to meet Cozy’s eye. He folded his arms and glowered and turned his head away. Cozy just looked stunned. That was honestly, genuinely the first time she had ever heard Paul refer to her as anything other than the child. She’d thought about it, considered how she might have felt when - if - the moment came. And it now had. Here of all places, with him like that, in the middle of a flaming argument. All those thoughts and comfortable conclusions about how she thought she’d feel when it finally slipped out seemed a long way away now, and pretty bloody useless. She sniffed, sniffled, and then buried herself into his chest and burst into tears. Not any particular type of tears, really, more just a general outpouring of the many and numerous emotions swirling about within her that had finally reached boiling point. Paul was somewhat taken aback with the small pony suddenly bawling on top of him and soaking through the thin, poorly-fitting gown they’d got him into, but he got over it pretty quickly and without even having to think about it too hard. What he felt he needed to do just slipped out. “Hey, shh, it’s okay, Cozy, it’s alright,” he said with a softness entirely at odds with how he’d been yelling moments before, putting his arms around her again and hauling her up so she settled better and rested more comfortably. Her crying didn’t stop, but it did become less forceful. “Damn horse. Ridiculous. Horse for a daughter. What the hell has my life become?” He said it, but there was no force behind it. Not much sense in trying to pretend otherwise at this point. It was out now, and he simply couldn’t find it in himself to deny it anymore. That it was ridiculous didn’t make it any less true. “Now?” Twilight asked, again looking to Cadence. “Now’s okay,” Cadence said, nodding.  They moved in. Paul didn’t look at them or even move at all, in fact. “What?” He asked. “We’re glad you’re feeling better,” Cadence said. He did move then. His eyes moved, flicking to her and narrowing. “I do not know who you are,” he said. “That’s okay,” Cadence said, smiling and unfazed. This irritated Paul but before he could let it get to him too much Twilight piped up: “When you arrived, why didn’t you ask Cadence for help? Or ask her if she’d seen Cozy Glow?” She asked and Paul’s brow furrowed. “Who?” “Princess Cadence? Princess Mi Amore Cadenza? Her? Right here? Next to me?” Twilight said, which didn’t clarify much and, in fact, made things worse. That she was pointing at Cadence as she spoke should have helped, but Paul ignored her doing it and instead just squinted at Twilight some more. “...who?” Cozy was as ever staggered by her dad’s continued - and at this point, pretty obviously willful and malicious - ignorance of the land in which he lived, especially given that he’d met basically all of the Princesses at this point. More than once! Two of them were in the room! He was talking to one of them! And she was pointing at the other one! Who he’d just spoken to! “You’re not fooling anyone,” she said. He rolled his eyes. “Pffbt, princesses, princesses, princesses. All same anyway. No use. Could do myself.” “You nearly died!” Cozy pointed out, again, gritting her teeth in frustration when Paul rolled his eyes at her some more. “That is a bit much. Plenty healthy,” he said, grumbling in sotto voce: “Prefer to die than ask a bloody princess for help anyway.” This got him another whap from Cozy and he growled. “Stop hitting me, child!” “Stop being stupid, then!” “Stupid! Me, stupid! Says the child who snuck off up North thinking it was a good idea!” “Says the grown adult who thought wandering around in the snow without any idea where to go would work out fine!” “You-” Celestia and Luna walked in and Paul let his head fall back against the pillows in despair. “Shit, more of you. Like that other time, hmm? Big mess? Fine, fine, come in. Get in bed, why not? All get in. What does it matter?” Didn’t these princesses have anything better to do? Countries to run? Rulings to pass on down to those toiling beneath them? That sort of thing? He’d seen more of them then he’d seen some of the people he’d used to work for, Paul swore. “Kind of you to offer, Paul, but I don’t think we’d all fit,” Celestia said, all breezy. In an amusing twist that neither side were aware of, Celestia, Twilight and Luna had in fact all arrived five minutes before Paul had arrived. Unfortunately, since they hadn’t known this, they had gone immediately to Cadence to liaise and work out a plan of action, meanwhile Paul had shown up and started freezing to death. They’d just finished liaising and were about to start sending out the guards to sweep the streets for signs of Paul when some other guards who had not been briefed and who had no idea what was going on showed up with this strange, unconscious creature that had collapsed outside some citizen’s house and which they weren’t sure what to do with. Funny how these things work out sometimes. But that’s an aside. “Why you here?” Paul asked. “It’s a coincidence,” said Luna, flatly, earning herself a bemused sideways look from Celestia who’d plainly been under the impression that she was the sole provider of pithy commentary. She took it in her stride though. “Twilight came to us and informed us of what had happened and what you had decided to do and, with it being a time-sensitive issue, we came as fast as we could in the hopes we might be able to happily resolve the situation. And here we are. Ta-dah,” she said, smiling. Paul was not smiling, but that was hardly new. “Again I say, do you not have better things to do?” He asked. “Oh, any excuse to get out of the house, Paul, you know?” Celestia said, waving a breezy hoof. “Hmph.” Here the conversation died a death, as Paul was plainly several miles away from anything resembling the mood to talk and, with one half of the conversation not willing to participate, there wasn’t a whole lot any of the others could do. But this was fine. Most of those present knew Paul, and this did not come as a surprise to them. “We’ll leave you for now, let you rest,” Celestia said. “But we will be back,” Luna added. “Good-ee,” Paul said through gritted teeth. And out filed the princesses, one after another. Celestia brought up the rear, even giving Cozy a little wave goodbye which Cozy returned, to Paul’s low-grade annoyance. She shut the door on her way out, leaving just Cozy and Paul and a mildly uncomfortable silence. Once all the royalty had departed the room felt much more spacious. Cozy was still by Paul’s bedside, and Paul was (unsurprisingly, perhaps) still in bed. Hardly like he could have gone anywhere. Without any princesses or other authority figures to set himself against Paul felt marooned, now, particularly with Cozy there. He actually felt like an enormous idiot and also had absolutely no idea what to do or say next, which was an unusual enough situation for him to be genuinely unpleasant. He glanced sideways at her and found her staring at him. “...I am glad you’re safe, you know,” he said, unable to meet her eye. Cozy sighed and butted her head affectionately against his arm. “I know. Sorry if I scared you. I really didn’t think you’d find out, least not until it had happened. Better to get forgiveness, you know?” “Heh, smart child. Surprised you hadn’t already left to come back,” he said. It would have been just his luck to arrive and nearly freeze to death with her long gone. He deemed it a minor miracle that things had worked out the way they had. “Oh, I’d missed the last train and Princess Cadence was going to put me up somewhere and I was telling her it was fine I’d managed somehow and then Twilight and the others arrived and said you’d-” Paul cut in here, as he could kind of see where it was going. “I think I get it, Cozy,” he said. Then asking as a thought struck him: “Why did you come up here, anyway? No-one’s told me this. You just went off but you must have had a reason, right?” “It’s not important,” Cozy said sheepishly. “I’d say it was pretty bloody important! Definitely want to know now that you’re being all coy about it. Spit it out.” Cozy hesitated, chewed her lip a moment, tried giving him the Big Eyes in the hope it might soften him and cause him to relent, realised the Big Eyes weren’t working, sighed again and then very quickly blurted out: “Iwascominguptogetyouabirthdaypresent.” Paul squinted at her. He hadn’t got a word of that. “What? Slower, louder, actually separate,” he said, making a ‘stretch-it-out’ gesture with his fingers. Cozy, sour, sat unmoving for a moment. Then: “...I was trying to get you a birthday present,” she said, not loudly but at least slowly and clearly enough that Paul heard her this time. Not that hearing her made what she said actually come across as sensible to him. For a second he thought maybe he’d misheard her, but on being confident he hadn’t he was left bemused. “...a birthday present?” He asked. Cozy threw her hooves up. This again. “It was stupid, alright! I know it was stupid! I’ve been over this! More than once!” Paul was still wrestling with the answer he’d been given. He really couldn’t parse it. “...what on earth possessed you to try and get me a birthday present? From here?” “When I thought it up it seemed like a good idea!” Cozy protested. Paul was now laughing. Her vehement protesting just made it worse. “A birthday present! Hah! And for that she comes all the way here! Only Cozy! Only my Cozy!” He said, poking her between chuckles. She batted his hand away. “Alright! I know they say we can look back on these things and laugh but you’re not meant to start so soon!” The laughter was now enough to make his wounded ribs hurt, but not so much he minded. “Ahaha! Oh, to be inside your head even for a minute, child! Hah! Ahah!” “Everyone says my heart was in the right place! Be proud of me! And mistakes are part of growing up anyway! This is development! I’m maturing! These’ll be memories that’ll last a lifetime! Probably a friendship lesson in there too, probably! Be proud of me!” And the laughter was now enough he couldn’t reply, so he just grabbed her and hugged her. Cozy squeaked.