Chapter 7: “Breakfast in the Doughnut Shop of Sacred and Profound Knowing”
The hospital staff hovered around the nurse’s station, standing there transfixed by the tiny drama that was playing out before them.
Their eyes followed along as a little figure made his way timidly up the corridor… only to go sprinting back down its length, and into the room beyond.
Their heads swung back and forth as the figure again approached, made noises of surprise and alarm… and then sped back down the length of the corridor, sliding into the same room once more.
As morning light fell through the windows, more of the staff of the West Wind Annex for the Treatment and Care of the Magically Enchanted and Unresponsive gathered, the smell of cafeteria breakfasts and new coffee rising around them.
Their heads swung slowly to the left as the figure once more made tentative steps up the hallway, the golden glow of morning falling around them.
“Okay… okay,” Spike said, making tentative steps towards the nurse’s station once again.
“Bet ya he makes it to the water cooler this time,” said Pacemaker.
“That’s a bet,” whispered another orderly.
The dragon came forward, made one, two, three steps farther than last time…
A desk drawer slowly rolled shut in the nurse’s station, the metallic ring sounding out as it settled back into place.
“Gah! What was that?!” Spike called, his feet dancing beneath him, and once more the dragon spun around and pelted back down the hallway to Twilight’s room.
A collective sigh once more lifted from the staff.
“What are you smilin’ about?” Pacemaker asked as the other orderly snickered. “He made it to the cooler.”
“Yeah, but he ran back… again,” said the other, watching his duties double under the weight of their wager.
“So?”
As the two young stallions argued about the terms of their bet, the rest of the staff watched Spike leaning against the doorframe, his hands pressed against it, as though peeking in on the one who lay upon the bed.
Twilight remained there, keeping the same position she’d been in since the night before. Not moving, just breathing shallowly.
Spike sighed heavily, watching her… just being sure that she was still not awake, and then turned to the hallway again.
“Okay… okay,” he breathed, and then set his eyes on the distant doors of the wing, past the assemblage of staff that both waited impatiently for him to leave so they could perform their duties, hoped against hope that he could make himself find some breakfast, or just pondering the spectacle of his inner turmoil.
“Okay,” he said, lifting his foot.
There was a crash, and the dragon nearly molted an entire layer of scales as he leapt into the air. There was a collective moan from the staff as he spun back to the door.
Spike pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing again as a distant pony placed boxes of bandages and poultices upon the upended dolly.
Twilight remained still and quiet.
I… I’m going for some breakfast, Twi, he thought to himself, careful not to be seen, less his fear about being so discovered come to light. I’ll be back really, really soon, I promise. I promise…
I promise.
Another promise, one that had ended with her staring up at him through brackish waters, fell through him. The dragon winced, bit the back of his claws, and spun towards the door again.
Yet another promise, the promise to Celestia that he would try, sat in him. He took another breath and lifted his foot.
“Okay… okay,” he said, closing his eyes. He leaned forward, and took a step, and then another, and another.
And then his body lurched to a stop, unable to move. His eyes were still closed, and he clenched them tighter as visions leapt at him. Visions of Twilight falling out of bed, of her awaking alone and scared, of her surrounded by two long vipers, their tongues flicking as they lowered themselves across her body…
Gentle hoof-falls fell down the hallway.
They came closer, and Spike recognized them. They came closer still, and he could feel the closeness of the pony, could smell her clean, sterile scent.
“Spike,” came Comfort’s gentle voice. The dragon felt a small movement lift from the mare, and his arms waved through the air in front of him. Comfort moved that much more, and his fingers found her outstretched foreleg. His fingers touched to her hoof, and then his arms wrapped around her, gathering her close.
“Follow along with me, Spike,” the nurse said, giving him a small nuzzle. “Here we go.”
The dragon fell in besides her, letting himself be gently lead along the corridor. A few more steps fell from him, and as they went along Spike could suddenly feel the presence of a dozen more ponies.
“Have a good breakfast, Spike,” Pacemaker said as they slowly went past.
“Y-yeah, thanks. Thanks,” Spike replied, still not opening his eyes. The breaths of the staff that stood around the nurse’s station fell around him, and he fought very, very hard to keep from slipping away from Comfort’s guidance, to go pelting back down the hallway, to go running back to Twilight’s side.
Other voices lifted from the nurses, doctors, and orderlies, each one telling him to enjoy his meal, to have a good morning.
“Yeah. Yeah, thanks…” he answered the unseen faces. “Yeah.”
His arms wrapped tighter to Comfort’s foreleg as she guided him to the right, and down the corridor leading out of the West Wind Annex… out of the Ward of the Living Dead.
As they began to make their way down the corridor, Spike felt the staff begin to break up, their sport having ended. Soon they would be going about their duties, seeing to the dozen ponies that awaited them silently in the patient’s rooms.
Soon they would be giving Twilight her bath.
His eyes remained closed, his grip on Comfort strong.
He didn’t like being there in the room when they were bathing Twilight, when they were putting the tubes in her. The bustle of all of the doctors, nurses, orderlies… each one with so little concern in their faces, only a distant professionalism.
Each pony only doing their jobs… simply drawing out her blood for yet more tests, pushing nutrients into her body, drawing out what little waste there was to draw with a distant, practiced forbearance. And then, when all of that was done, they bathed her. They pulled out the tangles in her mane the way that he knew she hated. They wiped down her coat in uneven, non-parallel strokes that would have driven her compulsive nature mad.
All of these strangers seeing her so helpless, all of these strangers hovering over her… touching her… it was too horrible to watch.
It was just awful.
I guess that’s why there aren’t supposed to be visitors this early, he thought, gulping hard. Nopony wants to see…
The vision of strangers pulling her from the pool, of her broken, tattered body being heaved through the streets of Pursopolis, thwacked across his mind, and he gripped even tighter upon the nurse.
As he did he admonished himself for thinking poorly of these healers, of these dedicated ponies who only wanted the best for the patients of the ward. He bit the inside of his lip for comparing them to the crowd who didn’t know…
“Thank Celestia he finally left!” came an unfamiliar voice, the words leaping down the corridor behind them. “Maybe you guys can finally get some work done tod…”
A chorus of shushes erupted from the ward, and Comfort felt him jump. Concern washed over her face as she looked down at Spike. Had he heard?
The dragon slowly lowered his head to her foreleg, and his pace slowed.
Yes, yes he had heard.
Yet, they kept walking forward, kept going down the long corridors of the hospital. As they did the golden shafts of early morning light fell upon them through the windows, sparkling across his scales as they proceeded farther and farther away from the bedside where he’d spent his last week and five days... farther and farther away from Twilight.
“Have a good morning, Spike.”
“Eat up, Spike!”
Real hospital sounds were meeting them now, and as he was lead blindly through other wards the wheels of beds and medical carts lifted around them. The call of patients, the language of medicine, these all arose in competition with voices that wished him well.
“Thanks, okay. Yeah, I’ll… thanks,” he answered, trying to find the speakers, trying to answer without opening his eyes.
There was a rush of motion, and Comfort pulled him to the side. Hooves cantered down hallways, rushed voices calling out unfamiliar terms as what he could only assume was an emergency rushed passed them.
In their wake came alien smells, ones he’d almost forgotten… scents that seemed at odds with the clinical sterility of the hospital.
It was the smell of the outside, of the world beyond. He startled, realizing that they’d come all the way to the door, and for a brief moment he began to unwrap himself from Comfort, to begin to turn back to…
“Spike,” the nurse said, “you promised Princess Celestia that you’d try. You promised me that you would try.”
The little dragon folded his hands across his chest, wavering on his feet.
“D-doesn’t coming this far count?” he asked, his voice leaving him with a tiny whine.
Her silence spoke volumes.
“Ohhhhhh… okay,” Spike replied, exasperation filling his tone. He raised his arms, feeling through the air. She lifted her foreleg to him once more, and his hands slid around it. Together the earth pony mare and the little dragon boy went forward through the reception area. Spike heard the cacophony of fillies and colts crying as earaches and the imminent approach of check-ups drifted over them. He heard mares comforting their children and stallions cursing as they tried to fill out insurance forms.
He heard the dry coughs of ponies dealing with illnesses. He heard the miserable whimpers of ponies in pain. “She’s having the baby!” he heard a stallion call, a mix of delight and fear in his voice. He heard the rumble of a wheelchair, the heavy pants of a mare.
There was a flash of wind, a draw of air… and then he heard birds.
The dragon took a deep breath, and lifted his head. Suddenly there were many noises… city noises. Street noises. Noises one did not hear in the hospital… outside noises.
The little dragon blinked his eyes open, quick flutters protecting his eyes as they tried to make sense of the light. His hands came up, rubbing his face, and the world came back into focus.
For the first time in one week, five days, twelve hours, and a handful of minutes, Spike stood outside of the hospital… outside of the ward, outside of Twilight’s room.
He grabbed his tail.
“Spike,” Comfort said, letting his other hand slide off of her foreleg as it too went to his tail, stroking it in worry as he pulled it before him, “I’m proud of you.”
He didn’t answer the mare. He simply kept staring off into the distance, out over the streets of Canterlot beyond. The battlements of the palace stood in the distance, and banners, flags, and pennants rolled around in gentle breezes, their colors calling out to his senses. Beneath them ponies began their day, making their way up the high street, the warmth of Celestia’s sun falling over them all. He felt the sun, he felt the humidity in the air, and his senses opened up like a flower pushing up through the soil in spring.
The little dragon simply stood there… outside.
Comfort smiled, and then turned to go back.
“Comfort?” he called, still staring out over the city beyond. “I thought that ya, you know, had the mornings off. Didn’t ya have this morning off?”
She stopped at the door, watching his head pan back and forth across the cityscape. Eventually he turned. Even as he stroked his tail in worry, he looked to her, the question still sitting across his face.
“Yes, Spike,” Comfort replied, a sheepish smile growing on her, “I did have the morning off, as I usually do. I don’t start until ten.”
She looked down at the planter nearby, looking over the young flowers that peeked up at her from within.
“I just thought you might need some support, to help you get…”
Her thoughts were interrupted as the sound of dragon’s feet pounded across the courtyard of the hospital.
She looked up to see him running back towards the door, and for one moment she imagined him trying to run back to Twilight’s side, his efforts to keep his promise failing.
Her fear washed away as arms embraced her forelegs, making her teeter in place.
“Thanks, Comfort,” he said, some exhaustion hiding in his voice. “Thanks a bunch.”
The nurse smiled a small smile, and lowered her head across him.
“You are most welcome, Spike,” she said as he released her. Her hooves, now freed, rubbed across the frills on his head. She’d not enjoyed hearing the note of tiredness in his voice. She had hoped that he’d have slept well enough to take care of that, to remove the growing blackness beneath his eyes, to restore some of the color that had come out of him.
But, she hoped, this breakfast would do him much good, as would the spring air. This would revive him. This would restore him.
She told herself that lie yet again. She almost believed it. In truth, she knew, there was only one way the dragon would be restored, and none knew when, or even if, that would be.
“Bye, Comfort,” he said, backing away.
“Have a good breakfast, Spike,” she said. The nurse slid back into the hospital, the air escaping the vacuum of the space between the doors as she did. The sterile, clean smell of the hospital met her once more, and she sighed as the wails and worries of the patients at the reception desk fell across her.
Her head went lower. She simply wished that he would get better, and that he’d be able to find a way to get on with his life. She knew that he had come to realize it soon enough, or somepony would tell him before too long. He was too smart not to realize it.
Eventually, she knew, Spike would realize that very, very few ponies ever left the Ward of the Living Dead on their own hooves.
Back out in the streets, a dragon straightened himself, struck a heroic pose, and then lifted his foot.
It came back down again without having moved forward.
“Okay… okay,” he told himself, striking his heroic pose once more.
It deflated around him.
Spike pinched the bridge of his nose, gave a little grunt, and then looked to the street once more.
Ponies were coming and going, each getting their day started. High-ranking unicorns went by, their heads held aloft. Their self-importance was interrupted by the pelting hooves of young mares and stallions making their way up the hills to the university beyond.
As the bells of the university rang out through the streets, the great carillon at the barracks came alive, and Spike recognized “The Watchpony’s Lament” as the ancient chimes rang out over the capital. The guardsponies would be changing their shifts, and soon weary soldiers would be making their way back to their homes in the city, seeing their children off to school, brushing their faces alongside those of their spouses.
Artisans, crafters, farmers, peddlers, and hucksters… these too joined the steady stream of ponies going up and down the high street. The market would be opening soon, and even as Spike stood there he saw one pole go up, and soon the canopy of a colorful stall lifted over the buildings at the edge of his perception.
It all seemed… it all seemed just a little unfair.
He ran his hand up and down his arm, and then lifted his head to the windows on his right, the wing of the hospital clinging close to the rock face upon which it was perched. “One, two, three,” he counted, looking at each floor, squinting in the reddish, golden light of the dawn that sat over the building. “One, two, three,” he counted again, counting the windows down the hallway of the wing.
There it sat, Twilight’s room, shining in the dawning sun.
It all seemed… it all seemed just a little unfair.
I’ll be back, Twi, he thought, staring up into the window. Ya know I’ll be back. I’m… I’m just getting some breakfast, is all.
He grunted, his fists balled up, his arms went straight at his side, he winced… and he took a step forward.
He took another, and another… and soon the little dragon was walking through Canterlot’s streets.
Spike had grown up in this city. Many of his first memories were of seeing the scenes that now played out before him from within Twilight’s saddlebag, and then from atop her back when he was older and steadier on his lavender perch.
It was a view that had been repeated two weeks earlier. He had smuggled himself into the hospital in Mrs. Mom’s, Twilight’s mother’s, saddlebag. The scenes he had witnessed from within the bag flit in front of him.
Flags had flown at half of their masts. Lavender bows had been wrapped around trees, and each home seemed to have ribbons of Twilight’s colors and mark wrapped around their columns and porches.
The shutters of the Royal Parliament had been closed, throwing the ministers and parliamentarians into darkness. “I’ll not have them opened until Princess Twilight Sparkle recovers!” he imagined Prime Minister Fancypants calling out, a thunderous applause of hooves meeting his declaration.
In all, the world that he had witnessed from within the saddlebag had been one that stood in solidarity with Twilight… with his Twi.
That world was gone.
He stood there, looking at one of the lavender bows sitting in the gutter, pot marked with the little rings of mud that appear after rainstorms. He lifted it out, and then raised his head to the city beyond.
Ribbons drooped on porches, and high overhead the great white expanse of the Royal Parliament building stood with its vast bronze shutters standing open, filling the space with fresh spring breezes… helping the ministers take their naps, he assumed.
It all seemed… it all seemed just a little unfair.
No, it all seemed so unfair. It was so unfair, the way they were all forgetting about Twilight.
Once upon a distant and receding time, he had paraded down this very street, the high street of the capital of Equestria. Rarity had been beside him, and the rest of his dearest Ponyville friends too. All stood in their proper places a few steps behind the newest alicorn sovereign of all Equestria.
Now, he gripped the lavender bow tighter, and these ponies who had cheered their new princess went about their days as though she weren’t laying in the hospital at the end of the block, her soft mane falling across her eyes as strangers poked her, prodded her, touched her… as she didn’t have any cold water to wake up to, as she was so alone, no rainbow to…
Spike stopped when he realized he’d run a half a block back towards the hospital.
He wrapped himself around a lamppost. He stood there panting, fighting to regain control of himself. He took deep breaths, and looked at the ponies around him.
Buck them all for not carin’ about Twi being in the hos…
Spike jumped, placing his hands across his mouth, his eyes going wide. Whoa, where had that those thoughts come from? That was unfair. That was awfully unfair, he told himself. They were just going about their lives, just doing what they always had. They were just doing their best to find their place in the world.
Spike’s world was lying in a hospital bed and, he realized, she didn’t want to wake up to find him a starved husk.
“You need riboflavin!” she announced.
Spike wheeled about, his senses playing horrible tricks on him. No, no… he was okay, it was just a memory, and something she’d said at breakfast back in the library kitchen once. He wasn’t insane.
Not yet, at least, and not in public.
Still, it had brought him some comfort to hear her voice, if even just in his head. As he walked back down the street he imagined her next to him. “You need more minerals than a pony would,” she said, her air of intellectual prominence standing out around her.
Twilight’s head had been filled with all of the facts she’d discerned about his diet after his first heavy molt that morning, and now they played in his mind and sight once again. “Still, that means that there are certain vitamins that are more important for you as well, and riboflavin is one of them! Oh, I’m so excited about this! We’ll find out what pony foods are best for you, and what you can eat that is special, just for you, especially if you’re gonna grow faster and faster. Isn’t this great, Spike?”
“Yeah, yeah, Twi,” he muttered under his breath, bouncing off of a mailbox as he followed his spectral best friend, several bent lamp posts and teetering carts marking his progress as he followed behind.
“So,” said his imaginary Twilight, her eyes shining, “now that we know all of that, what kind of wholesome, nutrient filled breakfast are you gonna make for us?”
He smiled.
“I’m gonna have some doughnuts here at Joe’s,” he said, motioning over his shoulder with his thumb.
His phantom Twilight rolled her eyes, giggled, and then faded away as the high street of Canterlot appeared before him once more. To his right small fires showed where he’d accidentally and unintentionally committed unforgiveable acts of vandalism as he had followed along behind his vision of the mare.
He quickly pressed the lavender bow beneath others that Joe, unsurprisingly, had affixed to his shop, and slipped inside as quickly as possible.
It was a good bet that if you arrived at Joe’s Doughnuts after about eight in the morning that most of the larger stallions (and even, on occasion, some of the more fit looking mares) of each race you saw there were, in fact, Royal Guardsponies.
They too had lives outside of the garrison. Many of them, especially the older ones, wished to be home to see their families off to their days, or were on their way up to the palace to begin their watches.
In the beards, manes, and eyebrows you could catch sight of the white paint of Celestia, or the dark grey of Luna, depending upon whom they were answering to that day… whichever of the Sister Sovereigns their regiments were symbolically serving on the rotation.
This familiar reality came back to Spike as he looked around the interior of Joe’s shop. It was the first time he’d been back since the night of the gala, and it was no surprise that he found the familiarity of the place both happy and a little painful.
The familiar table where he and Twilight would sit as she studied, her hot cocoa steaming, was on his left.
It was that heavy dose of the familiar that he avoided as he walked to the counter, away from the wobbly old table where he and Twilight had shared so many breakfasts.
He saw the single missing tile in the floor, very near the door. He heard the clink of spoons in coffee cups. He saw the portraits of guardsponies and regular army soldiers above the counter, some wrapped in black crepe.
Prominent among them was the portrait of Joe’s baby brother Coffee Bean, wrapped in laurels, the candle burning beneath it…
The shop hadn’t changed. It remained a bittersweet place that smelled of doughnuts, coffee, and hung with the practiced daily movements of years of safe, comfortable routine.
“It’s Spike,” came a voice, quiet at first but then louder. “It’s Spike!”
In an instant he was hoisted up to one of the stools beside the counter, and there was the rush of hooves around him.
The newspapers may have focused on Gossamer Gauze, the caster who had put Twilight into the coma, and squealing fan-fillies may have claimed Shining Armor as Twilight’s savior.
But, when Shining Armor had spoken to his old command, the Royal Guards, it was a certain dragon that had received the praise. Those guardsponies looked down over him now, reaching out their hooves to shake his hands… some calling him a hero.
It made him ill.
“Hey, c’mon now, give the kid some air, will ya?” rose a familiar voice, a deep one of a stallion that he instantly recognized. Spike looked up above the counter, and there stood Pony “Doughnut” Joe.
“Heya, Spike,” he said, readjusting the paper cap upon his head, the flash of the green of his eyes meeting Spike’s in a smile.
“Hey!” answered Spike, a very tired, yet sincere, smile falling over his face as well. “Hey, Joe.”
For the next hour, an interesting cycle held sway over Joe’s doughnut shop. Plates of doughnuts appeared, and Spike was encouraged to eat them, and cold milk too. Somehow, across the years of his absence, Joe had remembered the dragon’s favorites… as though he and Twilight had never stopped coming, as though they were still regulars at the shop.
The customers came one by one, in small groups, and whole tables at a time to see Spike, to talk to him… to ask about Twilight.
Spike swallowed some more of his doughnut, slowly sipped some milk, and did his best to repeat his sad refrain, to explain that she was unchanged. Twilight was still locked somewhere beyond.
He’d suddenly felt poorly, but more doughnuts appeared, and his disposition improved each time.
The faces came and went. Coffee was poured, doughnuts and muffins passed over the counter, and voices fell and lifted around him. The percolators steamed on the counter, the scent of the coffee within driving some more life into him.
More ponies came up to him, wishing him the best. The armor of guardsponies clanged to the floor as they reached for his hands, the briefcases of government officials sat beside them as they told him to stay brave… that they were all thinking of Princess Twilight.
“Yeah,” Spike answered, remembering the lavender bow he’d rescued from the gutter. How much they were thinking of her (or, rather, how little) stung at him as he tried to smile back. “Yeah.”
The morning wound down, and soon there were few souls left in the doughnut shop. Spike sat on the stool, using his hands to help him push his hips left to right, the stool spinning beneath him, the newfound energy from his breakfast releasing itself as he went side to side and back again in a sort of nervous cadence.
Take that, riboflavin.
Spike pushed slightly too far to the right, and he found himself staring down the counter to a pony that he kinda, sorta remembered.
The older stallion jumped a little as he realized that the eyes of the dragon were upon him. The stallion arched an eyebrow from behind his tiny glasses, and then hid behind his newspaper.
Spike arched his own eyebrow, pondering the customer who sat at the last stool at the end of the counter. As he did the stallion peeked out from behind the newspaper again, and the two sat there arching their eyebrows at one another in some sort of baffling and uncomfortable competition.
Eventually the older stallion gave up, raised the newspaper to hide himself once more, and reached out a hoof to tap the teacup on the counter.
As it chimed, Spike suddenly remembered this earth pony. This was that jerk that sat huffing and puffing at the door every time that he and Twilight had gotten to the shop first, before Joe opened. Twilight had never noticed, what with her nose continually buried in a book in those distant, melancholic university days.
Still, even though he’d been little more than a fingerling, Spike had noticed how upset it had made the stallion to be second… how as soon as Joe had opened the door he’d race for the exact same stool in which he now sat, as though he thought Twilight would somehow steal it out from under him. As they had sat at their wobbly table on the entirely opposite side of the café he had heard that same rhythmic tapping of the teacup, and now Joe appeared with the carafe, filling the stallion’s cup once again, as he had for years, apparently.
“There ya go, Call,” said Joe with a little laugh.
“Thank you, Joe,” answered the figure hidden behind the newspaper.
Artificer Call. The name snapped back into Spike’s memory as the sound of the stallion’s voice lifted around the doughnut shop. It was a lofty, academic tone, and Spike suddenly remembered that the stallion had done something scholarly and cultured in the dim and distant past.
And, the dragon remembered, he’d figured out some way to live on the proceeds of it ever since. What a life.
Spike felt eyes on him, and he spun around to find Joe staring at him. Spike opened his mouth, but before he could say anything Joe passed something over the counter.
Spike looked down, and as he did his eyes went wide.
The blue sapphire sat there, sparkling in the morning light. Its perfect hue reflected across the pristine white of the counter, and Spike’s eyes boggled at the sight.
“Joe,” Spike whispered, “that’s… that the gem I paid you on the train. That’s the gem I paid ya when the pets ruined…”
“Yeah,” said the stallion, lifting the dragon’s hand with his magic, pressing the gem there, and then closing it with another waft of his green aura. “Yeah, ya did, and I’ve been tryin’ to find the time to get it back to ya since.”
Spike wrapped his other hand around it, cupping it between them. He looked up to the stallion in disbelief.
“Joe…”
“Take it, Spike,” the stallion said, chuckling a little as he did. “It took me awhile to figure out, but I realized that you were trying to earn some bits, too, or that ya had a reason for takin’ care of those animals.”
“N-no, J-Joe, I… I can’t, I wasn’t being…” began Spike, stuttering as he juggled the sapphire in his claws, trying to pass it back to the stallion.
“Naw, that’s fine,” said Joe, punching Spike in the shoulder jovially… nearly sending the dragon falling from the stool. “We go way back, so don’t think on it too much. Buy that smart cookie somethin’ nice when she wakes up.”
The stallion stopped, and soon a look embarrassment across his own face.
“But, yeah, don’t tell her I called her ‘a smart cookie’. Ya know I always used to rib her about that, when she was just a university filly. I mean I wouldn’t want her to think that I’m bein’ too familiar. I mean I’d like to think that Princess Twilight Sparkle remembers…”
“Hey, Joe,” Spike said, smiling back at him, “it’s cool. I won’t snitch on ya, and I think Twi would be cool with that anyway. We go way back, the three of us, ya know?”
The two smiled, and as they did it was as though Joe noticed the very real, very profound tiredness that sat over Spike. The dragon wavered there, fighting to slide the gem into one of the ductile pockets that sat in his scales, and looked back up to Joe with deep, dark hollows beneath his eyes.
“Whoa, Spike, you look awful,” he said, spinning around to the percolators. Steam lifted from the space beyond the pony, and Spike craned his neck to try to peak over Joe’s shoulders. There was the sound of a mug being filled, the splash of liquid across a ceramic surface, and soon Joe turned back to the counter.
As the unicorn placed the mug before him, Spike looked down at a criss-cross pattern of caramel sitting starkly upon a layer of whipped cream.
“Whoa,” he said, surprise sitting across his features. “Joe, is this fancy coffee or something?”
Joe laughed once, a single loud note that sounded out around the largely empty café, causing the distant figure of Artificer Call to glance out from behind his newspaper.
“Naw,” answered Joe, a little gruff chuckle hidden in his reply. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for getting’ a kid hooked on that stuff! Naw, no, Spike, it’s just some hot chocolate… made it up real special for ya. Give it a try, huh?”
Spike looked down to the mug, up to Joe, and then to the mug again. He took it in his hands, and lifted it to his mouth.
It tasted good. He smiled to Joe, the whipped cream disappearing from around his muzzle with a wide swish of his forked tongue.
“Heh,” the little dragon said. “That’s really good, Joe!”
The stallion grinned wide, watching the dragon whelp lift the mug again.
Inside Spike, the warmth of the chocolate found some place to settle, melting away the walls and barriers that he’d erected over the last few weeks. Inside the little dragon, the glue that he’d use to cobble together his new world, the world of the hospital, of the glasses of cold water, of bringing Twilight the rainbows… that glue melted in the warm, comfortable cocoa that the stallion had offered up in an act of kindness and concern.
Joe jumped, his eyes going wide, as Spike lowered the mug, revealing not only a ring of chocolate around his muzzle, but a cascade of tears silently sliding down the child’s face.
“Spike, oh, wow, hey… what’s wrong, buddy?” said the stallion, trotting down the length of the counter, coming to Spike’s side. The stallion sat upon the floor, eye to eye with the whelp. “Spike, I… heh, I didn’t think that the cocoa was good enough tah make ya’ cry. What’s... what’s wrong, buddy?”
“I’m crying?” whispered Spike, large spheres of tears still rolling down his cheeks. The dragon lifted his arm, wiping it across his face. He stared down at the slick surface in amazement. “I… I am crying. I’m crying.”
“Yeah, Spike, but would ya tell me why?” asked Joe, the pony lifting his hoof to the dragon, a typical pony display of worry and concern. The paternal, fatherly part of Joe that he did not have many occasions to show itself came to the surface, and he leaned closer to the whelp.
“Spike?” he asked, forcing himself into the dragon’s line of sight.
The whelp looked at him, down to the floor, and then back to the old, wobbly table that stood in the corner of the café. Suddenly his younger self sat there, a little dragon fingerling eating a doughnut that was about half of his own size. Twilight sat there too, leaning across her own foreleg, books sitting around her as she watched him eat, a smile across her face.
It must have been the very first day Twilight had brought him here, after she’d brought him to live with her in her suite in the school, after she’d gathered him out of the nursery…
The memory washed across Spike, and he fell forward across Joe’s shoulder, his soft whimper catching in the pony’s ears. Wet streaks appeared across Joe’s back, marking where Spike’s tears rolled down him before catching in the strings of his apron.
Spike’s body, now satiated of its need for nutrients, was seeing to its wants, and what it wanted in that moment was somepony to confide in, one who would listen.
Spike blinked his eyes, driving the water from them, and lifted them to the line of pictures that sat above the counter. There sat the portraits of ponies with which Joe had served in the guard, the black bands showing those who had died at their posts.
There at the end, surrounded by laurels and marked with an eternally flickering candle, sat the picture of Coffee Bean, of Joe’s baby brother… of little Beanie, the stallion now dead and gone for what, five years?
No grave for the young archer, just a mass pit filled with other ponies on a battlefield made sacred by their sacrifice beyond the hills and far away.
Spike grimaced, berated himself in his own mind for his conceits. Twilight was still alive. If he wanted to know what real suffering was, he realized, he had a master patting the back of his head awkwardly as his tears spilled down the pony’s back.
Spike lifted his voice a touch, whispering, and with that Joe became one of the few ponies in Equestria to become fully aware of what had happened in a dark abscess beneath Pursopolis.
“… and it was in our heads, and we knew what it was saying, but we didn’t know the words…”
“It kept asking about something called the Zenith, b-but we didn’t know what it meant….”
“They kept coiling around her, and I bit at them, I swear I did!”
“… and I tried to keep her head up, I tried so hard…”
“… she was so scared. Oh, Joe, she was so scared.”
“…and Princess Celestia called it The Pillar of the Sun, and said it was an artifact, but she didn’t say anything else, and I haven’t really slept for weeks. I keep seeing Twilight staring at me, and she’s so scared, and I keep bringing her cold water, and, and…”
The unicorn tried to comfort him, patting him. Joe sat there, trying to draw some of the pain out of the little dragon. Even as he did, Joe dealt with some of the images Spike had placed before him.
Joe had been a soldier. He had seen his own blood pooling beneath him, and enemies had surrounded him. He could still see their cold black eyes staring down at him as his life dripped away, as his spurs clattered and he dared them to come and kill him.
What this kid had seen was worse. It was a lot worse... terribly worse.
Joe patted him some more.
At the far end of the counter, Artificer Call momentarily looked up from his paper. It took him a second to discern what was happening, and he could hear no words. Still, there was the whimpering of a child in pain, and his hoof went over his mouth at the sight of it.
After a moment, he went back to his paper, the assumption that it did not concern him sitting across his mind as he sipped his tea.
He could hardly have been more wrong.
“Spike,” Joe said, lifting the dragon’s face. “A smart cookie once told me that life is made up of the good and the bad. Right now, buddy, you’re facing the bad, and ya have every right to be upset. You’ve got every right to cry, Spike.”
The unicorn wrapped his magic around a napkin dispenser, and with a gentle tug he brought two or three to the dragon.
“What I want ya to know though, Spike, is that smart cookie made me realize that we make choices, that we are the sum of the choices we make, right?”
Spike lifted the napkins to his face, touching them to his eyes.
“Right now, you gotta make a choice. Are ya gonna keep doing what you’re doing, slowly starving and waiting for her to wake up, or are ya gonna do something more? Are ya gonna do something about it?”
Spike shuttered in place, the implications of what Joe had suggested dropping across him.
“B-but, what can I do? The medical ponies don’t seem to even want me around her, and I told the princess everything I know… but she’s not doing anything about it. I don’t understand why she won’t tell me. Why won’t she tell me anything more, Joe?”
Joe stuttered. His pep talk had been going so well. Celestia… Princess Celestia had just walked away? That didn’t seem right. He blinked, and the unicorn continued his speech.
“I… jeez, I don’t know Spike, all I know is that you’re the only one who saw what Princess Twilight saw, and you’re the one who knows her the best in the whole world, right?”
Spike shrank back down. That… that was right, wasn’t it? He’d been with her since she was four years old, more or less. They had secrets that even Shining Armor didn’t know. He knew choices that she’d made and that her parents didn’t know. There was literally no part of his own life that was a secret from Twilight. They knew each other better than any two creatures in Equestria.
He, he might be able to do something, to realize something that even adept healers couldn’t, see something…
“Joe,” Spike breathed, “where do I even start? What do I do?”
Joe smiled, sensing life coming back into the dragon. He spun the stool upon which Spike was perched around, pointing the dragon towards the only other remaining pony in the café.
“Ya see that stallion at the end of the counter?” asked Joe, a smirk going across his features.
“Ummm, yeah,” answered Spike, seeing the newspaper standing tall, just a hint of a pony behind it. “That’s… ummm, yeah, that’s Art… Artificer…”
“Artificer Call,” answered Joe. “Ya know how that… thing, the pillar thing ya mentioned? Remember how you said that the princess said it was an artifact?” Joe said, giving him a grin.
Spike nodded vigorously.
“Well,” the stallion continued, “long time ago, Call there wrote a book. It was all about artifacts, every one known to ponies. I bet that if you…”
Joe suddenly startled, catching Spike before he fainted away and tumbled off the stool.
A short while later, Spike sat at the counter again, running a glass of cold water between his clawed hands. It rumbled a little, the ice jiggling within, as he watched the rainbows it made falling across the counter. He ran it through his hands again, making it circle in place, watching the ice stay motionless as the glass spun around it.
“I’m gonna make ya up some lunch to take back to the hospital, Spike,” Joe said, turning towards the kitchen. “Go introduce yourself. Call’s a bit cold at first, but he’s my oldest customer, and he’s actually a softy. He’ll help ya out, Spike, go ahead.”
Spike nodded, took another sip of the icy water… and then gave a little leap…
Artificer Call lowered his newspaper as an unusual sound lifted around Joe’s shop. He panned his head back and forth, peering over his glasses.
Unusual, he thought to himself, I had thought that dragon boy had been seated farther away…
He went back to reading his paper, discerning the various issues at stake in the world of competitive bocce and the like. This pondering was interrupted as the sound lifted around the café again… the sound of a leap and a landing…
He dropped his paper to realize that the dragon was now in the seat directly next to him. Call startled in place, juggling the newspaper in his hoof as the emerald eyes of the dragon shone up to him, the tail wagging back and forth beneath the creature as though he were some sort of manic puppy, and an unwholesome ring of chocolate sat around its muzzle.
“Hiya!” Spike said, watching Call’s expression go ashen. “Ummm, ya got a minute?”