Bold Words, in his haste to escape Chrysalis, tripped backwards and half-stumbled, half-fell behind his bed. Trembling, he continued his flight, crawling backwards as hastily as he could.
Scrambling upright in the kitchen, he grabbed for a pan and held it in front of him, offering what resistance and protection the piece of iron could. As he waited anxiously to, quite likely, be attacked and suffer a horrible fate, his shaking slowly subsided. After perhaps ten minutes had passed, and no changeling queen had come around the corner, cautiously he poked his head back into the bedroom.
Nothing had changed that he could see. Ever so slowly, he put one tentative hoof in front of another, guardedly advancing closer to the crash site. Peering over the bed, the changeling hadn’t disappeared. In fact, Chrysalis hadn’t even moved. One eye, a bit unfocused, slowly rolled around to look at him, went past, and then returned to his face.
A drip of blood fell from the corner of her mouth. Even as it hit the carpet, another began to pool.
Bold realized she certainly didn’t pose a threat to him right now. She didn’t look like she could even move. In fact, it was quite possible that without immediate help, she would die on his bedroom floor.
He walked once more around the corner of the fourposter, this time unafraid of the terribly mangled changeling. Her eye tried to follow him but lost its battle halfway through and rolled to the bathroom door, before refocusing and painfully making its way back to his face.
Careful not to step in the still-spreading puddle of blood, he leaned down and began to inspect the various injuries he could see. At that moment, he was glad he had learned some things from that observation shift in the hospital—he actually knew basic healing and diagnosis skills from that ill-fated trip. (He still had nightmares about that night.)
But as he catalogued the badly broken legs and what looked like a near-shattered ribcage (Bold felt sick at at the sheer extent of the changeling’s injuries), a small, pinkish lump on the floor caught his eye. Intrigued, he gave it a closer look—
Oh, dear Celestia. It was her tongue.
He felt bile come rushing up his throat, and frantically he turned and shoved open the bathroom door. He barely managed to get the toilet seat up before his revolted stomach rejected his dinner. Spluttering, he heaved for a minute, before resting his head on the counter to his side.
Her tongue had been—was—lying on the floor of his bedroom. Sweet mercy, she had bitten it off completely when she had crash-landed here. The kind of pain that would entail—and the sheer helplessness of being unable to call out, choking on your own blood—Celestia and Luna!
He shuddered in a combination of horror and pity, and with certainty, he came to one conclusion. He would not let her die on his floor, and neither would he turn her in to be arrested in such a state—it would surely kill her. He was going to ensure she lived.
After all, he could always turn her in later, after she had healed enough to be moved.
-----
Sometime later, for Chrysalis was in no shape to keep time, she was broken from the peaceful black by the emotions of somepony nearby. Very nearby—her weakened sense told her within this very room. The presence radiated a strong curiosity, anger, and a strong undercurrent of fear.
As she came back fully to awareness, she wished she had never woken up. Her existence was an ocean of pain as every nerve in her body cried out with their messages of agony, and it was only punctuated by waves of torment with every breath her destroyed body took.
But it was what it was, and in this condition, she couldn’t even choose to slip away, for she knew she couldn’t move her legs even an inch to end her own misery. The only thing she could do was open one eye, and even that brought an elevated sense of torment.
She focused on a startled stallion’s face only a few feet from hers. With a cry of shock, he scrambled around the corner of the bed next to her, and his emotions suddenly shifted to recognition—and the fear came fully to the surface.
She tried to open her mouth, to say something, anything, perhaps ‘wait’ or ‘help’, but all she achieved was a raspy breath, her missing tongue making it impossible to speak. That breath led to a short cough which quickly turned into convulsions, as her battered body protested with all its might at being forced to breathe sharply. After her lungs surrendered and the throes of agony subsided, she lay, beyond beaten.
Involuntary tears tracked their way down her face.
Trying to muster enough will to focus once again, Chrysalis didn’t know how much time had passed. However, the emotions of the stallion, now hiding nearby, had begun to lose its tinge of fear, and as he came closer she gathered what she could to roll her eye towards him.
It caught but for a moment, and she studied intently the features of his face before another breath disrupted her concentration and her eye rolled past him unwillingly. She sent it questing back towards him, and the cycle repeated—catch a glimpse, breath, lose focus, repeat.
He was close enough that, had she been whole, Chrysalis could have reached out and touched him. He gazed intently at her legs, then her carapace, and began to move his inspection up to her face when his eyes darted to something on the ground.
Her eye came slowly to it as well, and she recognized it. Evidently, he did as well, for a sudden tide of sickness and horror overwhelmed his concentration and concern, and he bolted towards the bathroom.
The turmoil of his emotions was enough to add another pain to her own litany of problems, but she welcomed the interaction as she watched intently his feelings change and take strange turns down odd paths. Then, something unexpected rose up, she could feel—protectiveness! Resolve!
Never had such feelings been directed towards her, and her breath stalled (it didn’t catch, because her ruined lungs couldn’t perform such sudden actions anymore) as she worked through what those emotions probably meant.
He wasn’t going to put her down on the floor.He wasn’t going to turn her in—or at least, not yet, she reflected, with the taste of law-abidingness—to the authorities. He wasn’t going to do nothing and leave her here to die. The element of caring told her something she could have never expected and found incomprehensible.
This stallion, upon finding her in his room, was going to do his best to nurse her back to health—to keep a bitter enemy of his kind alive because he felt it was right.
Right. What a strange, abstract wide-ranging term; one that had never meant much to her, before. It had simply been something which those foolish ponies had believed in, an artificial veneer on the harsh realities of survival. It had been a concept to be scoffed at and mocked, for there was no such thing as ‘right’ except in the survival of oneself and one’s family.
But now, it was a word which might now be her salvation.
If she could have moved her mouth, Chrysalis would have grinned at the irony. If she could have voiced something, a short bark of laughter would have echoed in the room.
As it was, however, she simply twitched, and another rasping gasp met her ears.
Another drip of her lifeblood hit the ground.
-----
Bold Words gulped as once again he surveyed the devastation of both his apartment and the mare who had done it. Trying to fix his apartment would be hard and expensive.
Fixing a changeling, however, promised to be harder and costlier than any home repair could be.
“First order of business is to put something over that gaping hole in my wall—maybe a tarp,” muttered to himself. “Do I even have a tarp?” Not knowing, he checked a couple closets, only to find that no, he did not own a tarp. He did find that coat he’d been looking for months, though. But lacking a tarp, the only other thing he had to make a cover with was his spare bedsheets.
Hissing his breath out in resignation, he quickly grabbed a hammer and some nails, and before long had nailed a white sheet over the hole in his bedroom and another in the hole in his kitchen. That done, he turned his attention back to Chrysalis.
She seemed to be awake, but her eye constantly lost focus on what it was looking at. It was probably a concussion mixed with some rather severe pain.
Grabbing his small first-aid kit, he opened it and surveyed the pitiful medical supplies within. The bandages he owned would in no way suffice to wrap all the wounds he could see on this side of her body alone, which meant—Hanging his head and sighing, he removed the sheets off of his own bed. He’d be sleeping on the couch tonight.
Slowly, he sopped up the pool of blood with towels and rags, wringing them out in the sink and using them again and again until they were stained green and filthy.
Then, with the most caution he could muster, he lifted her head a quarter-inch above the ground and slid a corner of the sheet under it. Slowly, he did the same for her front legs, but halted as a low noise of pain informed him of her injuries. Grimacing, he continued despite the terrible noise, and huffed out a breath of relief one she was settled on the sheet and the sound ceased.
He began to apply what little actual bandage he had to the most grievous of her cuts, sticking them in place with telekinesis. After that had been exhausted, he lifted the edges of the sheet and draped them over her body as a makeshift dressing, careful to avoid moving her legs.
That done, he surveyed his inexpert handiwork. It would have to do until he could get more supplies. Hopefully, however, it would suffice for tonight—for the sun, he noticed through the sheet, had finished setting and the moon was high in the sky, the night nearly half-over.
Unfortunately, his work would not be over until well after the sun had risen. He knew he’d be using one of his carefully-husbanded sick days tomorrow. Strangely enough, that was the thing he resented most about this whole situation. Not the changeling or the damage to his house, but using sick days! How strange.
Of course, the damage to his house could probably be paid by insurance if he made up a convincing enough story, and he could hardly begrudge Chrysalis for nearly dying. Having to use a sick, day, however—Oh, heaven forbid! Not the sick days!
He laughed at the ridiculous thought, but sobered as he turned to his next task.
It seemed most of her cuts had closed or were beginning to close, but persistently, blood came from her mouth, from the stump (eurgh) of her tongue. The moisture was probably keeping a scab from forming, and would continue to do so, and with her dangerous state, it could well kill her. And if she fell asleep or unconscious, she could choke on her own blood—which would be a terrible way to go.
Bold didn’t know how to perform stitches, and even had he known, he had no sterile thread to perform it with. Though he owned a subscription to Potionmakers’ Monthly (which was a terribly hard-to-get magazine, so far from Zebrica), he was no master of potions. That left him with only way to treat such a wound: such healing spells as he had learned back in school and while observing at clinics and hospitals for information for his books.
He wasn’t very good at them, but Bold couldn’t simply call a clinic and ask for a doctor. Um, Upper Neigh Jersey Clinic? I have an injured pony here... well, not exactly a pony, she’s a changeling. Could you perhaps come heal her?” He pulled a face at the thought of that conversation. Yep, definitely not happening. So his own inexpert magic it would be.
Hoping she could understand, he said, “I’ve done everything I can do for you without magic, but in order to help you anymore, I’m going to have to use some. Is that alright?”
Her eye found his and held it for ten seconds before blinking. It had lost his eye after the eyelid slid back open, but Bold thought he saw the slightest nod.
“First things first... let’s get this thing,” and with revulsion and the least amount of telekinesis he could use (even touching it made him queasier), he lifted the severed tongue. “Whole and where it’s supposed to be.”
Chrysalis’ mouth was slack, and carefully he telekinetically eased it open a fraction more. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologized preemptively, “But this is probably going to hurt.”
Placing the severed muscle about where he thought it should go (he really needed to hurry and finish this before he threw up again; it made even his magic feel nasty), he ran his memories back to those long-ago classes and the healing spell he had memorized in school.
Beginning the spell, he stuck his tongue out in concentration as he directed the stream of magic to mend tissue and revive dead cells, to join rendered blood vessels and create new nerve connections. Healing was a complicated business at the best of times, and by the time bold had finished even that little task, he was tired and sweaty.
As the spell terminated with that odd little mental ding embedded within its structure that said, “Spell completed successfully,” he huffed out a breath and sat back on his haunches, shaking slightly. “How does that feel?”
The changeling, eye clenched in pain, slowly recovered and opened it once again. Ponderously, she opened her mouth slightly, and her tongue moved slowly, confirming it was indeed whole once again. After one more scratchy breath, she spoke in a hoarse, breathy tone. “Water?” she asked.
Bold blinked. Water, of course! In his hurry to mitigate what damage he was capable of, he had completely forgotten things like food and water. For that matter, what did changelings even eat? At least some of their diet was emotion, judging from the reports, but was it everything they needed to survive? Did they need food as well? Were emotions simply a tasty or preferred food to them, and if so, could they live off of normal food like anypony else? Were some foods essential to them? Were some poison?
With a sinking feeling, as he trotted to the kitchen to grab a cup and some water, he realized that the newspapers had known even less than he had thought they did, which was saying something, for his opinion hadn’t been high in the first place.
How was he going to care for a creature he knew almost nothing about? He could inadvertently kill her through an innocuous deed that was dangerous to her kind.
This was going to be hard.