Everything hurt, and not in the way it had ached before- well, before. It stung, as though every one of my muscles had fallen asleep and were now coming back from numbness. My neck, however, burned with a stretching sort of agony I’d only felt a few times before.
Oddly enough, my chest fur felt wet, and as a painful ringing in my ears crescendoed and faded, I could hear a familiar voice crying softly.
I stayed quiet, despite my jaw muscles clenching and unclenching back to functionality, my tongue feeling far too large and alien inside my mouth before fading back to my senses’ periphery. She once said she’d never wanted me to see her cry, so I tried to wake up as slowly and obviously as possible.
For her sake, of course.
After a few moments, I gave a weak little cough, and then a genuine one forced its way out of my lungs, and the crying immediately stopped. Two hooves helped roll me over to my side as I took in great unladylike wheezing breaths, curling up on myself as full sensation slowly returned to my limbs. Light bloomed behind my eyelids and I waited for the pain of any sensation at all to dull before I forced them open.
“Rares?” A voice whispered, still loud enough it hurt my ears. I twitched my hoof towards my neck, and one of hers gently grasped it for a moment before lifting it up to my neck, pressing it gently against my pulse. “Yer alright, yer safe, it’s all okay.”
“How long was I out?” I tried to ask, and managed a few mangled syllables as my muscles tried to remember how speech worked.
This was far from the first time, and Applejack knew me, knew who I was better than anypony. She was the only one who did. “Only about an hour, darlin’. Deep breaths now. Y’alright if I move you to the bed? Ah tried to towel ya off as best I could after washin’ ya since you, uh, made a mess on the floor a bit when ya fell, but yer probably still pretty chilly even if ya don't feel it yet.”
I scrunched up my muzzle as much as I could to brace myself as my olfactory senses returned, but all I could smell was the faint lingering scent of jasmine, no other trace of any instinctive accidents that may or may not have happened while I was, er, out. “That would be lovely,” I tried to say, which came out as half a pained groan of agreement.
“Alright, Ah’ll be gentle as Ah can, promise.” I felt her nuzzle gently against my side, and then nose herself underneath me, settling me onto her back before slowly, steadily walking towards the bedroom. She was gentle, just as promised.
It still hurt like hell.
I sighed as she flopped me back onto the mattress and laid down beside me, wrapping her hooves around me almost gingerly, as though she were afraid I’d flinch away. Instead I took a deep breath in, slowly let it out, and shakily pet her hoof with my own.
We’d never talked about it. Applejack never mentioned what had happened at all, not the first time and not since, and I’d never told her what I’d heard, or been able to hear. Both between us and in front of everypony else, it was always an accident that I’d barely survived, or a stress reaction that made me pass out before she found me, or a fainting episode, or a bad dream. It had been years since we moved away from Ponyville, but it had never so much as come up as a topic. Not between us, anyways.
I wondered if that thought should have bothered me more than it did. Instead, I wrapped the hooves that had twisted my neck earlier a bit tighter around my torso and tried to fall asleep. I needed her, and she wanted me to be happy more than anything. There was no need to complicate things, not when it was me and her.
Sleep didn’t come, despite my exhaustion, and I didn’t hear Applejack’s breathing slow either. She just held me in her hooves and we watched the dawn-cast shadows creep up the wall through the blinds. It was peaceful. Everything was just as we wanted it to be. It was perfect.
Idly, I let my mind wander from the colors of the sunrise to the idea I’d thought of the previous day, and found I had no problems recalling it at all. Metallic flashes on gossamer, shimmering like scales in a sea of clouds, I mused to myself as Applejack rubbed my side tenderly. Ridiculous, on its own at the very least, I mentally decided, letting my eyes slide shut, but maybe it’ll come in handy someday.
It was okay. I had time to figure it out. All the ideas I'd had earlier felt within mental reach now, my mind clearer than it had been in a very long time.
A knock at the door jolted me from my reverie, and I felt the mattress shift as Applejack rose, groaning tiredly, to answer it, and sleep finally beckoned to me at last. The Boutique could wait for a few hours, I decided as I tugged the corner of a blanket over me, filling the void Applejack left.
The world drifted in and out, and I could just make out snippets of words as my wife talked with what sounded enough like Apple Bloom that it put my mind at ease.
“Ah heard it, ya know.”
“Heard what, AB? Quiet now, Rares is still sleepin’ a bit.”
“Somethin’ from the earth. Somethin’ wrong, sis, and it ain’t the first time Ah’ve heard it.”
"Sounds like a problem fer somepony else. Ah ain't heard nothing. Didja just come to visit to tell me about feelings, or is there something else ya wanted to discuss?"
I wasn’t worried, and buried my head into my pillow, almost, but not quite, drowning out a little sigh from a worried sibling that sounded like an echo of my own.
“You’ve changed, Applejack, ya know that?”
Everypony else was all the same. They just wouldn’t understand us. All we had was each other, in sickness and in health, for rich or for poor.
Til’ death do us part.
And knowing us, not even that could slow us down.