//------------------------------//
// Chapter 15: Spike's Stand. 
// Story: Life through Love 
// by SentientHydra 
//------------------------------//


I laid on the ceiling with sticky hooves, pressing the side of my skull to the concrete, Listening and sensing the World above.
Tremors of hooves on cobble, soil, wood, the vibrations and murmur of speech and huma-... What was a human? Pony. They were the sounds of Ponies, going about their happy lives. The world was busy with life and motion, seen in shutter-shot images of sound that trembled up through my hooves.

Perhaps later I would return to this spot and listen to the rest, engage in learning more about them. For now I concentrated, tunneling my vision to focus on two very important Ponies. Or a Pony,and her Dragon at least. Spike's softer, skin-like tread hard to detect as he walked, waddling through the library and turning to face a following Twilight.

Twilight was easy to spot, to hear. She was currently ranting, little face all scrunched and red with confused irritation.

"Why did you call It  DUDE?!" She barked, the click of her teeth audible from where I lay. "It is not a 'Dude', Spike, It's a dangerous, Deadly Monster! You hit me with a bucket, and made my horn Ache!" She stumbled in her anger, tongue trickling out a splash of scattered syllables before she wrestled it back into control "W-whya-What If it had attacked?! I could have been hurt, You could have been hurt!" There was an ache of sharp, almost motherly terror to her voice as she audibly trembled, perhaps in imagined fear at her little dragon being harmed.

Spike had taken a step, maybe two, back by now. I could imagine his little arms coming up to defend himself from the onslaught of nigh-maternal beration. His voice countered my assumption of his cowardice, however, as the drake straightened his posture and spoke back in a calm, strong voice "He couldn't have hurt you, Twilight, I was there and there's guards on every corner who'd hear the distress wards!" He drained of his indignant strength, and spoke softer, though only slightly. 
"Besides Twilight, I'm sorry about the horn but I couldn't have let you hurt him."

Something in Spike's stance, his voice or his look that I couldn't perceive must have pierced through Twilight's anger. The unicorn recoiled away as if hse had been bitten by a snake. Her voice trembling as she spoke, talking quickly. "I-I wasn't going to hurt It Spike! I... I couldn't have.. I'm not the bad guy here!"

Spike sounded unimpressed, almost sad. "But you were going to hurt him, Twilight. You had the same look as when you were investigating Pinkie."

The words cut, Sparkle rearing and snapping hotly "I didn't hurt Pinkie!"

The dragon remained strong, pointing out that "You Like Pinkie Twilight. You're friends, but you still looked like you were ready to strangle her back then!"

Twilight stepped back this time, a blush in her voice of embarrassment "But I neve-!"

"You don't Like the changeling, Twilight. You never have, and you keep refusing to even call Him by his real gender. I know what spell you were charging" Spike spoke plainly, giving the impression that he knew exactly what he was saying.

"Th-.. What are y-?! ...What are you say-" Twilight had several false starts, stammering and treading nervously, eventually working through to irritation, Intellect failing in her anger. "Don't Interrupt me Spike! And don't try and use that against me!" She snapped, voice hot with a sheen of motherly anger "I don't know where this attitude is coming from Spike, but I don't want to see it again!" Twilight stepped forward "I wasn't charging /that/ spell, and I know I shouldn't have, even if I was..." She faltered, gritting through it with sheer willpower "b-but even If I had been, It would have deserved it. It is not a He or a him or a 'dude!' It is a heartless, terrible Monster that nearly Killed one of my Best Friends! If Cadence hadn't been there as fast as she was, to take away the pain and stop Fluttershy going into shock, then I might h-have lost her!!" Twilight choked at the end, her emotions welling up and merging with agonised pain and sadness.

Spike faltered too, stepping closer and halting on his words, even with my horn constrained I could almost feel the palpable empathy in the dragonling's voice. "Twilight... I know it's hard that Fluttershy got hurt, but you can't let that get in the way. I mean It's not as if it was really that bad."

Twilight practically blew the drake's head off with her snapping tone, though it lacked anger "Not that bad Spike? Fluttershy almost bled to death! Cadence said she was only a minute from being irrecoverable!"

Spike flinched nigh audibly, biting off his own anger to speak calmly "I k-know that's what Cadence said Twi... But I spoke to Redheart too, and she said that Fluttershy's shoulder was more cut than Hurt. Nothing important had been cut, and the incision was clean!"

Twilight stepped away with a heady clomp, snipping chillingly "are you saying that Cadence was lying?!"

Prompting a quick, stammering response from her smaller assistant "N-no!" He recovered his calm quickly, explaining through a skeen of nerves "I'm just saying that Cadence might have overplayed things! There must have been a lot of blood, and Rainbow was panicking, then there was that whole thing where you ran off into the woods with the guards!"

Spike's caretaker stammered without words herself, perhaps trying to think of a response, before she settled on a weak "s-s... Still!" the unicorn wracked herself before expanding "Still. my horn aches, and I don't think that Thing is going to speak to me..."

The dragon's response was quiet. I had to strain to hear it, the voice soft "Maybe if you tried calling him a 'him', not an 'It?"

The mouthy, intelligent librarian had no response. 

"...Maybe we should go with a cupcake?" Spike queried, moving his carer towards the door gently, her hooves dragging with the fatigue of anger.

I didn't hear her answer, the pair already leaving.