Blackacre

by Princess Woona

Reverie

24 December, Y.C. 969
Ponyville

This time, waking up was not unlike coming to after a nap in a slightly lumpy chair: odd parts of her hurt, but for the most part she felt pretty refreshed. Jackie blinked a few times to clear her vision. Judging by the sickly color of the ceiling, she was definitely still in a hospital, a suspicion confirmed by the distinctly sterile smell of linens as her other senses returned. Sight and smell; a faintly metallic taste in her mouth; gentle and oddly comforting mechanical sounds from the machinery next to the bed —

And pain, which came back with more than enough force to make up for its several-second delay.

Involuntarily, Jackie moaned slightly. She had had headaches before, but this was something altogether new: it wasn’t sharp or grating, just an all-around failure of her skin to block nerve endings. Each twitch brought agony; even the gentle throbbing of her blood vessels — little pulsating ribbons of torment, nestled just under her coat — was enough to bring a tear to her eye.

There was another band of sensation rolling down her flank. She was vaguely aware that it would normally be painful, but somehow it seemed less relevant at the moment.

“Oh, good. You’re awake!”

Jackie built up the courage to roll her head to the right, where she saw Agnes sitting in a large chair by the window. She seemed entirely comfortable, despite the bulky white mass of plaster around her hips and left hindquarter.

“Your leg!” she exclaimed, voice raspy from disuse. “What…?”

“Don’t worry about me, dear,” she said, shifting slightly and reaching out to a bell on the bedside table. “I just broke my hip; you broke everything!”

She rang it twice; the door was open before the light metallic sound echoed away.

“You’re awake,” said the nurse who entered, her tan skin only a few shades darker than the white scrubs she wore. Almost immediately she was at Jackie’s left side, checking the various equipment with a faint symphony of beeps.

“You’ll be wanting something for the pain,” she said, in what would likely be the most thorough understatement of the day. “You’ve been on vasodilators since we brought you in, but they only go so far. We would have given you something earlier, but you were out like a light. No sense building up your body’s resistance when you’re not awake to benefit.

“You probably want it to be most effective now, instead of when you’re out.” She held up a small syringe, then brought it down to the IV drip and slowly injected the contents. “There you go. It should kick in fairly quickly.”

“Thank… Celestia,” said Jackie through gritted teeth. “How long…?”

“Three days,” said Agnes, prompting her to roll her head back over to the right. Was it her imagination, or did it hurt less? “It’s early afternoon… December 24.”

“Three…” she started. “Dag!”

She caught a faint flash behind Agnes’ eyes before her comforting expression returned. “They… they haven’t found him yet,” said the older mare. “They’re looking. Still looking.”

“Still looking,” she echoed faintly. “Three days. How long… can…?”

“They pulled somepony out this morning,” said Agnes with a firm nod. “Very much alive. Right, nurse?”

“Right,” said the nurse after a moment. “She was very much alive.”

There was something there that Jackie felt she should latch on to, but for some reason she couldn’t focus. Her mind kept slipping… except this time was different. A controlled slipping, like someone put an ice pond on her head. And it cooled the pain, and she already felt better, didn’t she? No — not thinking clearly. Had to fight through it.

“Dag,” she said again, faintly. “I need… need to be out there.”

“Oh no you don’t,” said the nurse, restraining her with embarrassingly little effort. “You’re heavily sedated; your flank is almost entirely bandaged, so I suggest not trying to walk anywhere, even if you could; and your head is largely immobilized.” She paused for a moment. “Ignoring the IV and the monitors that keep you on the path to recovery.”

“But —”

“And,” she went on, fiddling with something just out of Jackie’s reach, “if you truly did decide to come out and help search the rubble, you would tie up about eight ponies from this hospital’s staff. Eight ponies who could be helping other patients or even helping with the search themselves.”

Not to mention the possibility that, if she was involved with the search, she might be the unlucky pony who uncovered Dag’s body. Even if he had survived the initial impact, three days at the bottom of an impact site… the chances were slim, to say the least. Abstractly, Jackie knew this. The knowledge was academic, though, lodged away and entirely out of mind, along with other relevant facts such as the temperature of fire, the physics of a fuel-air explosion, and the mass of airship steel. Reminding her of those facts at the moment, though, was not perhaps a good idea.

“My…” she started, eyes wide. “My head. My horn.”

“You have been in surgery,” said the nurse, not meeting her gaze. “Several of them, in fact. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“What did you do to me?” she demanded, again struggling up, and again being gently held back. “What did you do to my horn?”

“We…” faltered the nurse.

“They saved your life, dear,” said Agnes. “That’s what they did.”

“Your horn was crushed in the impact,” said the nurse gently, before Jackie could get a word in. “We had to remove almost all of it. I’m sorry.”

For a good long while, she said nothing.

“Show me,” she said quietly, her voice almost as numb as most of her body felt.

“You won’t be able —”

“Show me,” she repeated. “I saw it before; I want to see what’s — what’s left.”

The nurse nodded, then rifled around in a dresser. After a moment, she gave her a hoof mirror, supporting its weight so that Jackie could hold it up in front of her.

Her face was visible, but almost nothing else: starting just below where her eyebrows probably were, everything was wrapped in what seemed like half a mummy’s worth of gauze. She couldn’t feel a thing; that painkiller was effective indeed. Though… she wouldn’t mind feeling at least a twinge. Something, anything to show that her head didn’t just stop under the bandages. For all she knew there were two horns under there, or three, or twelve.

Slowly she put the mirror back down.

“Will….”

“I don’t know,” said the nurse quietly, taking the mirror back and placing it out of reach. “The Princess couldn’t do anything, but she wasn’t here for long. And, frankly, nopony’s done research into this before. We just don’t know.”

She digested the information slowly.

“There’s a lot of that going around,” she said, staring off into the distance. For a good long while she stayed that way. Eventually, she blinked a few times, realizing that both of the other ponies were still there, waiting patiently for her. Was she that out of it?

“I should be out there,” she said.

“You should be in here,” said the nurse firmly. “Believe me. I’ll get Doctor Turner in here if hearing it from him will make you believe it any more.”

“I believe you,” she said. “That just doesn’t change that I’d rather be out there.”

The nurse nodded solemnly.

“I’m sorry.”

“They’re taking good care of you here,” said Agnes, speaking up. “Besides, you can’t exactly walk around in peace out there.”

The nurse shot her a reproachful look.

“Oh, come off it,” she said, waving the glare away. “She had to find out sooner or later.”

“Find out what?”

Agnes smiled sadly. “You’re famous, dearie.”

“I’m what?”

“Do you have a copy of today’s?” she asked the nurse. “Could you…?”

After a moment’s hesitation, the nurse nodded, making for the door. As she left, Agnes clucked softly.

“A few minutes before they found you, they found a camera in the wreckage,” she said. “When they pulled you out, somepony took a photo of it. Nopony remembers who did it, but that photo was gold.”

“Here,” said the nurse, re-entering the room with a sheaf. She handed it to Agnes, being very particular not to show it to Jackie. The pony accepted it, glanced at it, and flipped it around, presenting it to her.

Her vision wasn’t nearly as good as it should be — was that getting harder, too? Must be the sedative — but she could make out the front page headline well enough. All Eyes On Blackacre, it read, in big block letters. Below it, as wide as the page, was an image that looked uncomfortably familiar: a large black oval in the sky, wreathed in green and coming down hard.

“The Mane,” she breathed.

“They’ve used that one a lot,” agreed Agnes. “Especially with the officials pointing fingers at Blackacre. Reminds ponies about what happened.” She shivered slightly. “Too close for me. But you’ve been on the front page every day, reminding them that there were ponies here, too. Below the fold.”

Her eyes tracked down, where a quarter-image was placed, suspiciously close to the crashing airship. It wasn’t a complex photo, but the composition was almost perfect: on a pile of rubble, pegasi lifted ropes up and unicorns levered blocks out of the way. In the front, six Earth ponies carried a stretcher between them; the form laying on it was turned away from the camera, with a delicate tracing of crimson dripping down her head and flank, almost like a spiderweb.

Face or not, though, she recognized the copper coat and ruby mane; they were her own. Jackie swore under her breath.

“They’re calling you the Mane Mare,” scoffed the nurse. “As if nopony else was in that audience.”

“Lots of ponies are looking for you,” said Agnes.

“I don’t want them to look for me,” said Jackie angrily. “Look for Dag. Look for somepony, anypony else. I’m here. Go away.”

“We’ve denied all requests for information,” said the nurse quickly. “You’re not even here under your own name. Total patient confidentiality.”

“You’re part of the family,” said Agnes with a smile. “I loaned you the family name. It’s only right.”

“Jack?” said Jackie. “Jackie Jack.”

“Of course not,” she said with a laugh. “I gave you my own. We’re family, Jackie; somepony’s got to take care of you.”

“And now, you have to take care of you,” said the nurse smoothly. “Get some rest. Let your body take care of itself.”

“I will,” said Jackie, nodding. The action was slower now; maybe there was more than just painkiller in that drip. “Thank you.”

“Ring if you need anything,” said the nurse, more to Agnes than to her. “And take care of her.”

“She’ll be fine,” she said, waving a hoof at her charge. “I’ll keep her in bed.”

As the nurse left, Jackie mused that perhaps a pony in a lower body cast might not be the best choice to keep someone in bed. As she reached that conclusion, though, she also determined that perhaps it wouldn’t actually take much to keep her in bed. For one, she was having trouble summoning enough energy to keep her eyes open.

That was fine. She was safe, and Dag… he would also be safe. Of course he would. He was tough; always was. They just hadn’t found him yet. She would go to sleep, and when she would wake up, he would be here. Maybe he had gotten dinged up, but he would be fine.

Jackie settled back into the sheets. She wasn’t famous, wasn’t… no, that wasn’t her in the photo. That was some other pony. She was here in a hospital bed, sleeping, waiting for Dag to come back. A different name. Nopony would find her here, no one but Dag. She had always imagined she would end Jackie up Hammer, anyway; the thought of going under a different name for a bit didn’t bother her.
It rolled off the tongue well enough; Jackie… Smith. Yes, she could get used to that. At least for a while. At least until Dag was back.