//------------------------------//
// Chapter Fourteen 
// Story: Clipped Wings 
// by Desrium 
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Chapter Fourteen


And where does a pony separate their past from their roots?


He was lying on a table, the edges of which rolled and drifted like a fog in that confined space where the cloud kept its shape. A table made of cloud, a table and an entire room. Shelves built into the blue tinted walls were stocked with all manner of medical supplies. Through blurred vision Falcon Wing looked up at the pills, boxes and other things sitting on them. A familiar sight; one he had grown up seeing on regular basis. His body lying prone protested still, pangs of pain running through him from injuries he did not know he sustained. Well, there was one he knew of: a bruised back. But how he felt now... he felt as if everything about him was wrong. As if every injury he ever had afflicted him simultaneously at that moment, leaving him to stare up at the shelves that lined the walls of doctor Patchenfix's workstation. His orange eyes slowly made their way downwards to see what they could see. His heart lunged, adding to that excruciating agony he felt in his chest already. He saw his forelegs laid straight off to his sides, swollen, the sleeves of his coat shredded. Severe bruising was visible where large patches of his fur was missing on them, red replaced with black and blue. He knew they were broken -no not broken- mangled. The rest of the wounds only got worse from there, large gashes and tears in his hide, dried blood denoting where a pool of it had formed around him. Rear legs twisted in gut-wrenching ways and the subsequent sickness informed Falcon Wing the internal injuries were probably no better than the outer ones. 


He was a corpse that was still lucid, if only barely so. His eyes slowly panned over to his side where Patchenfix was, the medic standing on her rear legs with one foreleg on the table's side for support. She looked down at him intensely with a flashlight in her mouth. He squinted when the white pegasus shone it into his eyes directly.  

"What do we have here this time, little one?" she mumbled through the flashlight absently, not speaking to him at all. 

Compelled to reply, Falcon Wing croaked: "A bit of everything,"

She did not seem to hear him however. Nor did she seem to see the extensive damage to his body. If she did, she had no reaction to the grievous wounds. It had been quite some time since Falcon Wing was last in her office, but he remembered the pony to be... a pony. One empathetic and considerate of the pain a patient could be feeling. 

"Unless that was an act too. Her attempt to do good?"

Falcon Wing was taken aback by the thought. Where had that come from? It didn't... feel like it was his. It was as if it came from some dark corner of his mind, not a conscious thought but one he found himself contemplating in spite of the unbearable aches and throbbing he felt constantly. 

"Was anypony ever truly honest with you? Aside from the bullies... who obviously hated you...?"

The red pegasus frowned. Was he really asking himself these questions? Or was the hurt finally starting to mess with his mind? Regardless, he answered his own questions as they came. He thought of his parents. For the short time he had them in his life, he knew them to be sources of love and care. The first kind faces he ever saw... faces he could barely remember now. He thought of Klaxon and Steiner, ponies who were straightforward and honest to the point of cruelty. Ponies who were the complete opposite of inviting when he met them, yet they still became his friends in the Wasteland. Last but surely not least was Alana; the mare who has been by his side ever since that meeting at Junction town and the one who had saved his life... three times. Or was it four now?

He heard her voice saying: "Good things don't happen when you go off on your own." 

If how he looked and felt was anything to go by, she was right. She was so right.

"Why is it that you of all ponies have suffered in the way you have? What have you done to deserve it?"

Falcon closed his eyes. "Life doesn't work like that. Ponies die all the time for any cause, great or petty. There are others who have gone through worse than I, surely. Who am I to ask if I 'deserve' it?"

"How noble. With a mindset like that, is there any doubt that you desired to be a hero?"

"My mindset comes after experience, not inherent understanding," Falcon told himself, "when I set off into the Wastes I was after glory as much as I wanted to help make things better. But a hero isn't the pony who acts in order to get praised. A hero is the pony who does what should be done because it is the right thing to do."

"How very profound. How very... amusing," the Magimus' telltale rumbling made itself known. 

Falcon Wing's eyes shot open. Patchenfix's white fur had been stained with brown and black, streaks of red mixed into the filth that clung to her fur and doctor's coat. Her eyes were dark, hollowed out holes in her skull where blood ran free like tears and flecks of flesh hung. Suddenly, Falcon Wing found it all too easy to scramble away from her, his injuries nonexistent. He fell from the table of clouds, the marred visage of his medic rising over the table to look at him. She grinned madly as she stood on it, spreading her wings and tilting her head in a jerking motion. Her bones cracked as she did, and a seam in her flesh circled her neck, flesh tearing like tissue. Blackened blood spilled forth onto the table and floor in globs. Patchenfix's head nearly turned full circle before it fell, bouncing in the puddle of her own blood and landing upright in front of the horrified red pony, staring at him in the same way that skull did when he disturbed the skeleton beyond the cellar door. 

Falcon Wing's lips quivered, his breaths ragged, caught in his throat. 

"Go ahead. Scream. I won't judge you. Well, not much," the Magimus joked. "Oh, how interesting you are little hero. A pony rejected by his kin, the closest to him are only there through obligation and his only friends are ponies just as unfortunate as he...  just how much can one pony cry? I suppose I will find out through you, my impulsive friend..."


"Go ahead," the head of Patchenfix said, lips still parted in that deranged smile, "cry!"


Falcon Wing screamed as loudly as he possibly could, putting more distance between it and himself before curling up into a shaking ball.