It took Valyrie a couple of times to try and open her eyes. The light was unusually harsh on her, causing her retinas to sting. Moaning, she reached up with her claw and rubbed her brow, hoping to alleviate the pain. It hurt in its own way, but worked enough for her to try and open her eyes once more. As the harsh light faded into more recognizable colors, she noted she was staring at the ceiling of a white room.
Valyrie blinked a couple of times, trying to recall what had happened. Her mind was foggy, but bits and pieces came back to her. The last vivid memory she had was her fighting a large and very angry changeling, all the while trying to reach Comet, who was apparently being held hostage. She remembered she wasn't doing too well, being lifted into the air and then...
Her left shoulder stung at the memory. Valyrie hissed slightly and tried to move it, but found she was unable to do so. Looking over, she saw not only her shoulder, but her whole left arm was bound securely with layers of white cloth and suspended in the air with a couple wires. Her mind went blank at the sight and a sense of horror washed over her. She knew the fight went badly for her, but she didn't think her entire left side was broken. Tentatively, Valyrie attempted to move her claws and found the tips of them wiggle out of the end. Valyrie breathed a huge sigh of relief and relaxed back against her pillows, knowing she could at least she could still move.
The dead silence of the room made her uncomfortable after several hours. Valyrie had never been so bored before, but she tried to pass the time as best she could. She experimented moving part of her left arm and shoulder, finding she had no pain from her elbow down. Upwards towards her shoulder, though, she could barely twitch without experiencing a mind numbing lance of pain. After that, she counted the speckles on the ceiling three times, confirming there were four hundred and seventy two in the three tiles above her head, meaning there were about one hundred fifty seven per tile, give or take a few. Once math bored her, she hummed to herself a couple songs from her home, wishing her mother was here.
A steady set of hoofbeats caught her attention as she looked to the door on her right. Standing in the doorway was a violet unicorn, levitating a clipboard. "Ms. Valyrie Coldclaw?" the pony asked.
"Uh huh?" Valyrie responded. She didn't particularly like the use of her last name, but she said nothing.
The pony lowered the clipboard and gave a sincere smile. "How are you feeling today?"
"Oh, uh, pretty good."
"I see," the pony said, "So, since you are awake, I gather you have some questions you would like to ask?"
Valyrie just looked over to her arm as the pony began to speak again.
"Ah yes, about your arm. Well, when you were brought to us, we did our best to splint it. Your clavicle had split and dislocated your humerous, meaning we first had to reattach your arm to your shoulder before we could fix what was wrong. We put you into a deep sleep and applied some very powerful pain relieving spells so you wouldn't wake as we maneuvered your arm back into its socket. On a side note, you had three ribs with rather large cracks in them as well."
Valyrie said nothing as the doctor rattled off item after item of problems she had. It took several more minutes for the doctor to leave and she sat in silence, wondering what her father would think. Here she was in Equestria as a form of punishment and she somehow managed to pick a fight with a powerful enemy, leaving her hospitalized with a completely messed up left shoulder. In the Griffon Kingdom, this was a sign of great honor as fighting off such an enemy and only getting one arm hurt was a rare thing. Many of those who fought larger beasts, like wyverns or chimeras, came back in an even worse state than she did. Plus, those monsters didn't use magic, unlike the changeling she fought.
About four days later, Valyrie sat alone in the same bed, thinking and staring at the ceiling silently. Comet had visited her in his new armor and told her of what had happened in the past few days. He relayed the promotion ceremony and told of his new rank, but saved the part about Angel for last. It made Valyrie sad to hear he chose Angel over her, but she wasn't bitter about it. She had accepted Comet wouldn't be hers after her confrontation with Angel before the attack, but that didn't mean she didn't shed a few tears after talking to Comet.
Now, all alone, she waited for the time to slide by. As she was nodding off, a couple of hoofbeats caught her attention. Looking over, she was rather amazed by what she saw. The familiar sight of a bat pony stood in the doorway, looking around as if lost. The pony was taller than Angel and had a more masculine appearence, showing off some larger muscles in his front legs and neck. He had a scar running across his right eye, almost like a wound from an encounter with a wild animal. His mane was shorter than Comet's, trimmed closer to his fur but long enough to tell it was a mane. His more feral looking eyes scanned the room and came to a dead stop on Valyrie.
"Oh!" He exclaimed in a voice that reminded her of a cello. "I'm sorry! I was looking for the head doctor and I got, uh, lost..."
"It's okay." Valyrie said automatically, not taking her eyes off of the pony. "What's your name?"
The pony watched her too and responded, "It's, uh, Midnight Glow. What's yours?"
The two wound up talking for a good long while, Midnight Glow totally forgetting who he was looking for. Valyrie found him likeable, more so than Comet when she first met him. He had apparently come to join the guard after hearing a sibling of his had, so he was hoping to find the said pony.
"What's the pony's name? I might know who it is." Valyrie offered.
Midnight Glow looked her straight in the eyes and said, "Her name is Angel Beats. She's my half sister."