Chapter Eight
Blue felt like he was going to go insane if he had to be cooped up in the hospital one more day. He had been walking circles around his room for the past two hours and it didn’t look like he was going to be stopping anytime soon. One of the reasons was, of course, the striking lack of anything to actually DO in there, but while that was annoying, it wasn’t really important compared to the other reason for the madness that seemed to be clawing at his mind.
He angrily turned without warning and slammed his head into the bed with as much force as he could muster, the mattress cushioning the blow tremendously. He sighed and let his body slide off the mattress, gravity depositing him onto his chest. He laid there for a long time, zoned out, his wings twitching as if to make up for the stillness of his legs. Then, after a few minutes, he realized he was staring directly at the pony who sat in his room, and apparently making her slightly uncomfortable.
He sighed, stood, and proceeded to walk around his room. Again. He didn’t particularly want to talk about what was bothering him, especially to this pony: Front Page, if he remembered right. This was the first day she’d been in the room, but she seemed to be taking it fairly well, given that she was locked in a room with a monster.
Blue strained his neck and looked like he wanted to shout out the anger that was building in his chest, but he didn’t. That would cause all sorts of problems with the guards, and there was no reason to do that. He made his way slowly back to the mattress and sat down on the ground next to it, closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths.
“Are you going to tell me what’s caught in your horseshoe or are you going to continue to stew in your own anger?” The words held a tone of hesitance, and Blue knew she did actually care to some degree for some reason. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, but she wouldn’t know, a trick that was getting a lot of use by the changeling recently.
Instead of answering her, like Blue might’ve on a better day, he decided to bite back with another question. “Why do you care?”
“Half of it is curiosity, half of it is sympathy.”
Blue appreciated the honesty, at least. He fought with himself about whether to tell her his troubles or keep it inside. On the one hand, if he told her, he would get some degree of closure from it, and closure was something he had precious little of so far. But if he told her, she could very well get the wrong idea. He didn’t know where she stood on the issue of his presence, or if she would gossip about what he might say, and he didn’t particularly want his issues all of over town.
Then, in the end, he decided to tell her. Worst case scenario, Blue figured, would be that everyone found out his deepest fears, and the idea of that was paltry when compared to the fear itself. Blue lifted himself off the ground and sat himself on the end of the bed, facing Front Page. She shared eye contact with him, and he appreciated that she at least cared about what he was going to say.
“What if I’m still a monster?” Blue asked sincerely, looking at Front Page closely to see how she would react. She raised an eyebrow in unspoken question, so Blue decided to elaborate on it. “I mean, I have amnesia, right? I know just as much about changelings as you ponies do. There’s no guarantee I won’t just turn into a monster as soon as I’m out of here.” He flinched at the words, realizing how poorly he phrased that. Front Page seemed to look past it, however, and he felt a happy that he apparently hadn’t fudged up horribly.
“I mean, if I was terrible before—I don’t know if I was, but it seems likely at this point—then what if I still am terrible deep down? A bout of amnesia can’t assuage a destroyed soul, can it? Even with amnesia involved… no one changes that fast, not that drastically, in one day.” He let his back fall against the bed, his wings tight against his carapace to prevent damage. For better or worse, the truth was out. Now he only needed to see what was going to happen because of it.
“I did,” came the soft reply from the pony. The only one who had come into this room looking incapable of a soft reply had just given him one, and he was slightly confused. When he leaned himself up to look at her, he saw her smiling lightly at him in a kind way.
“I was a terrible pony, once: rude and angry with everyone I met. And then…” Her words drifted off, but he recognized the look in her eyes and sighed. He was beginning to think that Hendrick had dealt with the personal life of every single pony in the entirety of Canterlot at this point.
“Hendrick,” he said as Front Page looked at him, concerned and hurt that he had sighed after she’d spilled a part of her personality towards him. After the answer, however, a humorous smile spread on her face.
“Hendrick,” She confirmed, then continued her story. “Don’t tell him, but my first ‘breakdown’ was an act. I was gonna come back with a snarky remark after he comforted me, but then he said he could get me in to see Luna.” Her eyes seemed to flash at the words. “Can you imagine how many copies of the newspaper would sell if I could dig up some dirt from inside the castle itself?”
“Newspaper?” Blue asked, a sudden fear building in his gut.
“Oh yea, I’m the head of the newspaper here. It’s been a while since someone’s not known who I am. Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” She then continued with her story, but Blue was only half paying attention, his mind now entirely caught by the fact that he had just told his darkest fear to somepony far far worse than the town gossip.
“Anyway, so he got me in and I got to see Luna. And I searched and pried and lifted to look under every single stone in the entire place, but no matter how much I dug, I couldn’t seem to find any dirt at all. But being in the castle like this was a once in a lifetime experience; I had to make my best use of it.
“But I never found anything, and I started to get angry. Where were they hiding all these horrible secrets? I had to find out; it was all that mattered. Then, as I was carefully interrogating one of the castle workers, I felt a presence behind me, and I turned to see Luna there. She looked at me, and I could tell in her eyes she knew what I was up to. And then she offered me dinner.
“I’m still completely astounded by that. Like, I would have kicked myself out so fast in her place, and she decided to offer me dinner. I mean, I had to refuse; I’d just had a really awkward dinner with Hendrick while we’d waited for the night court to open. But after she left, I sat there and I came to a conclusion. Maybe, just maybe, there wasn’t any dirt to be found here. Of course, the princesses have secrets, I have no doubt, but all the political rumors I’d heard…. I couldn’t find anything that would even suggest them.
“And I realized that, really, the princesses just wanted their ponies to be as happy as they could make them. Sometimes, the result was questionable—and fueled some nasty rumors—but in the end, that’s all they wanted to do. I thought about it for a day or two non-stop, and eventually I had to conclude… maybe I’d been in the wrong.
“So my entire reporting process changed, and I reworked it around getting the best possible truth I could without hurting anyone who didn’t deserve it. And, surprisingly, purchases slowly went up. My financial assistant says it’s because I opened up my target audience. Before, I was targeting the town gossips. Now I was targeting the city itself, for better or worse.”
She smiled in nostalgia as she finished her story, but Blue found his stomach tying itself in knots in his chest. He was only partially aware she’d finished her story, but he didn’t say anything. His mind was too preoccupied with how much trouble he’d just caused for everyone who supported him. Front Page looked at him in confusion as he fretted over his own affairs, but was stopped from asking another question when a knock came from the door.
“Mrs. Page,” came the gruff voice from behind the wood. “Your shift is over.”
“Alright,” she called to the other side of the door and stood politely from her seat to make her way towards the door to open it. Her steps were stopped by a panicked call from Blue, his mind clearly in a state of worry.
“Can I ask that you not put what I said in your paper?” She smiled as she realized that he had been too worried about that to listen to her story properly, something she couldn’t really blame him for, in the end.
“I never intended to.”
“You’d get a lot of sales…” Blue spilled out of his mouth and instantly regretting it, cursing himself for not being able to stay quiet.
“Oh, I know. But sometimes, it’s not about sales.” Blue smiled at her and she smiled back good-naturedly. “Besides, Hendrick would have my hide if I did that.”
Before Front Page was allowed to leave, a unicorn guard entered the room and tilted her horn towards Front Page, casting a simple spell on her. In response to the magic, a soft glow covered her in a blue aura. The unicorn nodded and looked towards the bed to see Blue there. The guard stepped back out of the room, and Front page was allowed to leave.
Blue would be alone with his thoughts for the next hour or two before another pony would be in the room with him, and he certainly had a fair bit to think about.
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Keep it going
! I really wanna see how this evolves.
Man it took me a while to figure out which person had what experienced. Sometimes stories just meld together after a while.
Congrats on getting featured! If you update more and more, it's just going to build up until you get this story in that box everytime...I hope.
Had to re read a paragraph or two, for a second I thought Hendrick was changling.
4417775 A lot of people seem to be having that remark, what was confusing may I ask?
4418330
ah, okay.
Who made the pictures for To Befriend The Night and To Swoon The Stars?
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Story Description.
4608288
I read the descriptions yesterday, how I missed that, I have no idea...
*brain fart*
4610923
It's fine.
4612012
It is? Damn, and I was starting to think that I was normal...
gg , m8 , plox continue k
Very good story.
when i started reading To Befriend the Night i didn't know were this random story i found would take me, but it's a great story from To Befriend the Night two To Swoon the Stars i've loved every bit of it even though its not complete and im looking forward each and every chapter 100% bishop approved
stay classy
Sempai!!
You are a the bestestestest water bottle evar!
I did find a real one this time. :P
"She"