AUTHOR'S NOTE: We now return you to your regularly scheduled, cutesy shipfic
Fluttershy’s eyes drifted open, and immediately shut again, squeezing tight. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to still be stuck. She didn’t want…
No, I need to be brave. For Pinkie. For everypony. With a shiver, she swallowed her fear and slowly opened her eyes, squinting at first, then slowly creasing open. She stared up into the pale, green goop that filled her prison, taking a shivering gasp to swallow a bit of it. The stuff was about as bland as anything could get, but it was there, and it did make her feel a little better. Her mind drifted back to the hatchery, and her heart warmed. Even if the hatchlings were the reason for her exhaustion, she still felt a surge of warmth at the memory of their nubby fangs and tiny little eyes, gazing up at her with the pure love that only a baby could know.
Just like before, a black shape filled her vision, blurred by the translucent walls of the tiny prison. She cringed and nestled deeper into the cocoon, trying to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible, but it was no use. The cocoon burst open and a pair of powerful forehooves wrapped around her body, pulling her into the light. With a resigned sigh, she allowed herself to be carried and laid onto the floor of her prison, the large, scarred changeling from before towering over her.
She closed her eyes against the light. The fear was gone; she was too numb to feel that anymore. Right now, she just wanted to enjoy her time in the light before she was thrust back into the darkness, made to languish in there for who knows how many hours in her own…
Something cold and moist nudged gently against her lips. Her eyes darted open, her vision filled with a tall glass of yellow fluid. Sitting up, she looked up at her captor, the same, large changeling with the scar over his eye as the day before, sitting back on his haunches and watching her with his one good eye. “I…gotcha a glass of lemonade this time, just in case,” he said, rubbing one foreleg against the other bashfully.
Keeping her wide, nervous eyes on him, she slowly crept forward and snatched the glass up in her hooves, giving it a few testing sniffs. The changeling moved his head in a circular motion that could be construed as rolling his eyes, if he'd had pupils. "Again? Are we gonna do this every time I getcha something to drink?"
Shaking her head fearfully, she downed the lemonade and laid the glass back in its original place, backing away to let him do whatever it was he wanted with it. "Thank you," she whispered.
The changeling's eyes widened, as if she'd just told it her grandmother was Discord himself, then the old stoicism came flooding back and he nodded, a stern look scrunching up his muzzle. "I just...can't have you passing out while you're performing your duties for the hatchery, is all. But...uh...you're welcome," he hissed, his words stumbling over themselves in a rush to get out of his mouth.
The pegasus arched an eyebrow at him. "Um...the hatchlings need to be fed again? So soon?"
"What do you mean by 'soon'?" He asked, pulling her collar and padlock out from beside her cocoon, as he had the day before. "You do realize half a day's passed since you fed them, right?"
Her massive, bright-blue eyes grew even larger, her jaw dropping. She barely even cringed or flinched when he drew close to apply her collar and snap the lock shut around her neck again. "Twelve hours!?" She gasped.
"Yeah. Try to go easier this time," he replied, holding the door open for her. "Hatchlings will feed until they're full: they don't know how to pace themselves like us adults. You shouldn't exhaust your love reserves every feeding."
"I-I'll try," she said quietly, following him out the door and into the hallway again. After a few steps, his larger stride allowed him to outpace the her, leaving her to trot along with her thoughts. Just where were her friends? She knew Pinkie and the Princess had been captured, but what about everypony else? Did they escape? And what about the rest of Equestria? Had the changelings invaded everywhere, or was the Crystal Empire it? And which one was more terrifying: the possibility that the Empire was only the first in a long list of conquests, or that Canterlot was somehow powerless to do anything about the occupation? Her head swam with questions, her eyes swirling about in her skull, only ending after she passed under a certain window. This time, it was covered maybe halfway with more of that strange, green goop, with what had to be the same changeling from the day before still working on covering it. Once again, he took one peek through the glass and hissed down at her, and once again, she took to galloping in fright. This time, the larger changeling scooped her up in his magic before she could even get anywhere.
He waited and watched patiently as she ran herself ragged, her eyes finally falling open as her exhausted hooves dangled limply from her body. She looked down into his ice-cold eyes, meeting the gaze of that milky-white, scarred orb. “I-I wasn’t…” she started.
“I know,” he interrupted, his voice still a threatening, multi-layered hiss. “I saw. Don’t worry; that’s just Dave.”
Fluttershy blinked a few times, scanning the changeling’s face to try and see if he was being serious. His expression remained in its usual neutral. “Dave?” She asked incredulously.
“Yeah, it’s a weird name, but there are only so many bug-based names out there,” he shrugged. “Don’t worry about him, he’s just a dick. Always has been. Probably pissed because he got such a weird name.”
“Oh. O-okay,” she said, wide-eyes still staring into his own. After a few minutes, the pegasus shifted uncomfortably. The changeling was still staring right into her eyes. Even when she retreated into her own mane, hiding one eye behind a few rosette curls, she still found his good eye locked on hers. “…Uh, um…you can let me down now?”
“What?” The changeling paused and drew back, as if snapping out of a trance. Shaking his head, he looked at the little pony still hovering in his magic and his eyes widened. “Ah, right,” he set her down gently, almost delicately, as if she were an ultra-rare, ultra-delicate glass figurine.
“Sorry about that, got a little distracted,” he said, opening the nursery’s door. Nodding, the pegasus trotted by under his foreleg, extended to hold the door for her. She waited for him as he carefully affixed the tether to the ring on the wall; once again giving it a few testing tugs, not even noticing the longing looks she shot over her shoulder at the hatchlings.
“Now,” he said, still looking the ring over. “Remember what I said: don’t exhaust yourself every single time. It’s unnecessary, and all it’ll do is make you really…”
Suddenly, the tether stretched taut, nearly whipping him in the cheek. “Why hello again, little one!” Her voice cooed behind him.
“…you haven’t heard a single word I’ve said, have you?” The changeling sighed, pressing a forehoof to his head and turning around. As expected, Fluttershy was cuddling yet another hatchling, pressing its swaddled, black body close to her chest, not even noticing the way the collar stretched around her throat.
“Do you remember me? Because I certainly remember you!” She sang in that oddly harmonious tone her voice possessed.
“No, he doesn’t remember you! He’s a baby! His brain’s mostly mush!” The large changeling standing vigil at the door grumbled.
Completely ignoring him, she continued cradling the little bundle until it burped and yawned, signaling a full tummy. Once again, she laid it in its goop-cradle, giving it a little kiss on the forehead and a whispered wish to have sweet dreams before flapping over to the next changeling. Once again, this changeling’s little eyes slowly peeked open, then its mouth yawned, revealing its nubby fangs behind a tiny bubble of saliva.
“Hoboy,” the large changeling groaned, this time prepared for what would come next. His hooves clamped over his ears just as the pony emitted the same high-pitched screech as the day before, this time nearly cracking the goop over the one window in the room.
“Look at him!” She announced, holding the infant up to the guard’s face as if this was the only baby ever created in all of existence. “He recognized me! You saw it, didn’t you!? He recognized me!”
“The only thing he recognized was a free meal,” he grumbled, even as she turned away and immediately focused her full, undivided attention on the tiny hatchling. The rest of the feeding session went exactly as it had the day before, each changeling removed from its crib and cuddled until it could be returned with its belly full and its horn kissed.
The only interruption in the routine came just before the final hatchling could receive the last scrap of love from the pony’s heart. Just as she lifted the little body up, the guard asked: “Why are you doing this?”
She looked at him and blinked, as if he’d just asked why the sky was blue or why pegasi had wings. “Why am I doing what?”
“You’re just – giving them your love,” he replied, motioning to the little bundle in her grasp. “Why?”
Once again, she blinked at him and gave him a look that asked if he was losing his marbles. “Because they need it,” she replied, again as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Yeah, but what do you care!?” He asked in frustration. “You ponies think we’re all a bunch of monsters! Hatchlings are just little versions of us! So why are you helping one out!?”
She furrowed her brows for a second, honestly considering his question, but then she looked to the little bundle in her hooves and smiled. She held the hatchling up to the guard’s face. “What do you see here?” She asked.
Now it was his turn to blink incredulously. “A…hatchling?”
“That’s right: a baby,” she replied, cradling the bundle close to her body. She hardly even shivered once it began feeding. “An innocent little child that has done nothing to harm anyone else, incapable of defending itself, not even able to sit up straight.”
“But…it’s harming you right now! It’s draining your love and leaving you weak and defenseless!”
“Maybe, but that’s a small price to pay to ensure something so small and innocent can live. After all, we were all the same way once, weren’t we?” She asked. “Imagine where we would be if someone hadn’t shown us that one small bit of mercy to help us out until we could stand on our own. Now, what kind of world would that be? Where one couldn’t show kindness to even a little baby?”
The changeling’s ears folded back, eyes widening. His knees buckled under his weight and he fell to his haunches. With one last little kiss, Fluttershy laid the hatchling back in its crib and looked up at her guard with a little smile, before immediately collapsing under her own weight, saved from smashing her face into the ground only by his magic.
She was barely conscious by the time he unlocked her collar again and carried her back to the holding room, once again laying her in the cocoon and zipping her in tight, and so she wasn’t there to see when once again he collapsed to the floor, clutched his chest, and groaned: “HNNNNNNGGGGGGHHHHH…”