Part 17
Silent Ponyville: Reunion
Stay away.
Part 17
------
"...what?" Lance said, completely dumbfounded.
"Yes," the Princess replied with a nod. "You are the first pegasus to ever stand here, much less deliver the valediction. This is really the first you're hearing of this?"
"I...suppose so..." He let his gaze drift away with a puzzled expression, quite understanding Celestia's skepticism as he looked out over the crowd again. How could he possibly have missed this ever so slight detail until now? Sensing that he was beginning to feel a bit foalish, she spoke up again before he could give the topic of his own ignorance any further thought.
"Actually I am not surprised. With all the effort you doubtlessly had to put forth to get here, it is probably for the best that you were focused on more immediately important things instead of allowing surrounding events to distract you," she conjectured assuringly.
Lance's eyes snapped back up, realizing he was being addressed again. But his pause continued a bit longer as he spotted a certain mare lingering at the back of the audience, trying to see over the crowd but lacking her usual mobility and confidence that would have her pushing her way to the front. The look of bewilderment left is face, replaced by a soft smile of his own as the pieces in his head that the surprise of this newest development had knocked loose quickly began moving back into place. He looked back to the princess at last and nodded in agreement.
"Yes your Highness, much, much more important things."
"I thought so," she replied, giving a nod in return before curiosity compelled her to glance over in the direction he had been looking, seeking what sight had so visibly altered his mood. "Oh, is that your wife over there in the back?"
Lance blinked, once more dazed and confused at how she had so quickly deduced their relationship, "Um...yeah...how did you know?"
"Well...I've, just seen that look in her eyes before."
"What look-buh!" Lance started before looking back towards his wife and seeing that she seemed to be trying to make Celestia spontaneously combust via sheer force of will, a fiery glare pointedly fixed upon the royal mare daring to speak to her husband without the express written permission of his wife. The barely restrained rage quickly died down when she realized that both her husband and the princess had spotted her and snapped out of it. Posey's face broke out in a heated blush of embarrassment before she hid her face behind a hoof, mortified at having been caught staring death at royalty...by royalty no less.
"Yes that look."
"I uh, I assure you your majesty she is the most wonderful mare I've ever met it's just...well, we're a couple weeks shy of starting a family and she's been a bit...I guess tense is a good word for it," he explained hastily as visions of his dear wife being locked in a dungeon flooded his suddenly paranoid mind.
"I understand completely Mr. Strongshy, no need to-..." she began, quite used to having to ease the panic of ponies who had been unfortunate enough to commit even some of the slightest breaches of etiquette in her presence, after which they would typically react as though they were going to be drawn and quartered for it. But rather than finish her sentence she paused, something clearly connecting in her head before she abandoned her first statement and rerouted into a simple question: "You're expecting you say?"
"Er, yes, yes we are," Lance replied without elaborating further. The dissipating sense of panic had made it somewhat difficult to catch up with the sudden mid sentence shifting of topics.
Rather than reply she looked back out toward Posey again, watching the heavily pregnant mare nervously trying to look everywhere but back toward her. Celestia let out a thoughtful hum as the smile returned to her face in a different form. Hers was the subtle grin of a pony who had just found something they'd been looking for.
"...Is something the matter...your majesty?" he asked hesitantly.
"No, nothing's the matter at all. In fact I daresay it's even better than before. I'm quite glad I delayed my departure to speak with you, this talk of ours has proven quite pleasantly enlightening," she said with a cheerful nod of her head.
"Oh? Why's that-I mean, if you don't mind my asking?" He mentally cursed himself. It would not do now of all times to let his curiosity make him speak out of turn.
"Of course I don't, but allow me to ask a few questions of you first?"
Lance silently nodded.
"How do you think earth ponies would react to an earth pony who finds that, say, astronomy is their special talent?"
"I don't really see them finding it that odd honestly," he replied after taking a moment to sort through his thoughts on the matter.
Celestia nodded, having expected such an answer. "And a unicorn that finds they have a knack for botany, what would other unicorns say of that?"
"Um...I don't think they would see it as unusual either."
"But what about a pegasus who, for instance, sees a forest path and chooses to walk along it instead of fly over it, how is that pegasus treated by their peers?"
Lance was about to repeat his answer a third time but wound up holding his tongue, finding that it did not ring true in his head this time. He fell into another pause during which the expression on his face became a bit less bright and his ears drooped. His memories held the right answer and it wasn't difficult at all to find it. "He gets left behind, called lazy and worthless, nopony invites him to anything, his name becomes the class term for 'loser', and the only mare in all of Cloudsdale that ever deigned to speak with him only did so on a bet."
...
"You know the problem I speak of then," Celestia said, opting to move on instead of apologize for digging up memories she hadn't meant to, which would only allow him to dwell on the topic even further. "I have never liked this double standard that allows earth ponies and unicorns to grow into the ponies they were meant to be while young pegasi are either driven from their homes by culturally encouraged contempt for supposed 'weakness', or simply molded into somepony they do not wish to be, all for the mere acceptance that should have been theirs by birthright. Worse still, this assumption of what is 'normal' has become so pervasive amongst pegasi that the unicorns and earth ponies have been slowly adopting it themselves more and more with each passing decade."
The memories of a certain comment from a certain unicorn about how ashamed he would be to lose to a pegasus surfaced, and Lance found himself glancing back at his best friend for a moment. Mannie didn't catch it, but that was only because his own eyes were diverted, the look of guilt on his face making it clear he was remembering his own words with just as much clarity.
"Unfortunately this is not something that can be done away with by decree, and though I've long been indirectly applying pressure for such change, pushing too hard can have the effect of making ponies push back and make things even worse, seemingly out of sheer principle. In the end this is something only the pegasi themselves can fix. You can then imagine how thrilled I was to hear of your accomplishments Mr. Strongshy, though I admit I had some reservations. Many who come here seek knowledge only in pursuit of their own fortune and prestige. Yet the way you have remained ignorant to the significance of your own accomplishments, clearly devoted to your family and your studies, speaks to me of a pony of genuine kindness, with a sincere desire to better himself for the good of others. I could not have asked for a better pegasus to accomplish what so many others have said would be a mere 'waste of wings'." She finished speaking with her head held high, clearly proud of her subject and wishing for the detractors she had put up with over the years to be there and see what their doubt had amounted to.
Once again Lance found himself in mental disarray, only able to stammer and begin replies only for them to be cut off before they quite made their way out of his mouth. This was different though. No longer was he confused or nervous. Instead of having what little grace he could usually manage shattered by shock and alarm, it had instead been warmed to melting point by the light of such high praise being heaped upon him, by royalty no less. Finally he managed to just smile and say, "Thank you Princess Celestia."
"You are most welcome Lance Strongshy. Now, though I would love to stay longer and meet this wife of yours, I must be going. I hope you will enjoy the rest of this special day, and I look forward to great things from you and yours," she said in parting. The royal alicorn and the two magna cum laude graduates exchanged a final respectful bow of the head before she made her way off stage and toward the building's exit to join her royal escort outside.
Celestia found herself stuck right in front of the door, a familiar sugar frosted scent reaching her nostrils. A look to her side had her staring at a long table filled with paper plates holding slices of her long running friendly nemesis that were meant to be enjoyed by the graduates and their loved ones after the ceremony. She bit her lip, looking to and fro whilst she fought a brief, futile battle against temptation before one of the cake bearing plates lit up with a golden glow and levitated into the air to follow her outside.
...
Followed by a second.
...
Followed by a third that lit up, moved two inches, lingered, then came to its good senses and stayed where it was.
"Wow..." Lance said to nopony in particular. Without a royal presence demanding his attention he was able to begin feeling the full weight of the place in history into which he had so unwittingly stumbled. He, along with Mannie, had also failed to notice the cake caper that had taken place near the exit, however it still made sense such events would be present in the good doctor's mind because-
"You seriously didn't know?" Mannie chimed in at his friend's continued silence, only to for their exchange to be interrupted by yet another round of applause upon the conclusion of a speech.
"Not in the least...wait, you knew?!" He turned back to the cerulean unicorn with an incredulously raised eyebrow after he had sat down again.
"If I had known you didn't, I would have told you. I just assumed you weren't making a big deal out of it," Mannie said with a shrug of his shoulders. "Congratulations, by the way. Hope you're ready for this."
"For what? The scrutiny of every major medical pony for the rest of my career?" That would have been enough to worry about on its own but then his fellow graduate went and made it worse.
"Well that's true enough I suppose but I was talking about your speech."
"Huh?"
Oh, right. He was supposed to speak...at a podium...in front of over one hundred other ponies.
"And now before we proceed with the passing out of diplomas," the master of ceremonies said from his spot at that very same dreaded podium.
Naturally Lance had been bracing himself for this...up until Princess Celestia had deigned to actually walk up and talk to the two of them herself. That sort of took his mind off of his impending public speaking.
"A very gifted student that I'm sure none of us could have anticipated would like to offer some final words."
By now the mental defenses he had been so frantically constructing had all fallen back into piles of rubble from lack of attention, and the thought of hundreds of eyes being on him was free to blindside him all over again.
"Here to give the valediction..."
What was he supposed to say now that he knew? Were they expecting him to say something special? He hadn't written anything at all about being the first pegasus of academic note in his speech! Lance was about to look like an oblivious fool in front of everypony!
"...Lance Strongshy."
The obligatory applause signaled that he should probably get to his hooves and walk over to the podium. While his legs dutifully obeyed and began carrying him toward his doom Lance still wasn't quite done navigating the newest bout of anxiety. But halfway through the seconds long trip a single thought suddenly and forcibly silenced all others.
This is stupid.
...
This...was stupid wasn't it? All he had to do was stand at a podium and read his speech, that was it. So what if he didn't say anything about being the first pegasus graduate? Why should he have to say anything about it? It should never have been something so strange as to warrant any mention at all, much less this deluge of attention. Lance was just another aspiring doctor getting his degree and that was all there was to it. It was the most normal thing in the world for him to do and if anypony else thought it was odd they were free to continue being wrong whilst he lived the life he had been planning on living anyway.
And so he stepped up to the podium with a degree of confidence of which he had never before thought himself capable. He read his speech just like any other non winged valedictorian would, still feeling a bit wary of the many eyes upon him but finding comfort in the sight of his wife at the back of the audience looking positively radiant with pride now that the jealousy and fearful embarrassment had worn off. Once the final words had been spoken and he wished his classmates good luck in the future, he relinquished his spot on the stage and returned to his seat with nothing more than the usual applause. The graduating class lined up and received their degrees then stood together for one last round of hoof stomping applause before the usual hat toss and dispersal into the crowd to be with the ponies dear to them.
"Lance I'm so proud of you!" Posey gushed, her eyes sparkling as she gave her husband a peck on the cheek and then hugged him tightly.
"Thank you so much Posey. I never would've made it here if it weren't for you." Lance said as he hugged her in return and enjoyed being able to just hold her close after spending the past few days as a pony shaped ball of stress. Granted he would probably just turn into said stress ball all over again as the birth of their foal grew nearer, but it seemed to him a much more welcome worry in comparison.
"Oh horse feathers, even if you'd crashed into somepony else's garden you would've made this happen anyway, " she lightheartedly admonished as she finally let him out of her delightfully crushing grip, "It's not like I was the one staying up all night going through big stacks of text books."
"No, but you were making my life incredible just by being there, and that counts every bit as much from where I'm standing," he answered as the three of them started moving out of the crowd.
She couldn't help but giggle a little at the sappy reply, "Okay, fine, I'll admit to helping a little but that is it."
"I guess I'll take what I can get," Lance acquiesced with a grin.
"So where's your marefriend Mannie? I was looking all over the place and didn't see her," Posey asked after they finally had some breathing room near one of the auditorium's walls.
"She had to work today, but as soon as she gets off we're going to hit the town to celebrate," Mannie answered. Though outwardly he seemed perfectly content with it, there was still a slight edge of disappointment to his voice.
"Her boss couldn't even give her a little time off for this?" Posey persisted with a soft frown, finding it hard to imagine ever missing such an event in a loved one's life.
"She probably could've managed if she'd pressed for it hard enough, but her job still isn't quite one hundred percent secure and things have been a bit rocky over there so she didn't want to rock the boat any...plus I guess we're just not that serious yet," he explained before ending with a sigh. "What can you do though? These things take time."
"Oh! Uh, when does she get off work?" Lance asked out of the blue, having set a derailed train of thought from earlier back on course.
"Ummm...assuming no surprises come up I'd say about three hours or so, why?"
"I was thinking-"
"E...excuse me, Mr. Strongshy?" an excited yet nervous voice spoke up from behind him. Lance turned around and came face to face with a young, white coated, blonde maned, blue eyed pegasus mare who still looked to be of high school age. She wore a black pair of glasses and was holding something beneath her wing.
"Yes?"
"I was...was wondering if you could sign my copy of the Equestrian Medical Association Official Compendium of Diseases and Conditions?" she asked as she pulled the aforementioned book from beneath her wing. One could tell it was a very serious text because the authors had not made even the slightest attempt at alliteration.
"Uh...I would but I don't have a-"
She then held out a pen with her other hoof.
"-pen...okay then I don't see why not," he said as he took the book and pen and added his signature to the inside cover. Signing an autograph felt really strange to him but it was only half a moment's trouble and it seemed to mean a lot to her, a fact made doubly apparent by her reaction as he gave the book back to her.
"Thank you so, so much! I'm sorry to butt in it's just, I've always been the 'wierdo pegasus girl' at school for as long as I can remember because I wanted to get a medical degree instead of a weather job. Everypony kept telling me nopony wants a brainy pegasus who just wastes their wings and I was starting to lose hope but then I heard about what you were doing and it really, really helped. I wanted you to know that, and I'm so happy I got to tell you first hoof, thank you again!" she rambled excitedly, practically bowing before joyfully cantering off back into the crowd shouting with glee to her father about her success.
...
"Well...that was kind of weird," Lance confessed whilst turning around as soon as he was sure his fan was out of earshot.
"So what were you trying to say before, Lance?" Posey reminded him in an attempt to shift topics away from the second female of the night who had approached her husband before any further irrational thoughts could slither into her mind.
"Let me talk to Mannie for a minute," Lance said before he pulled his colleague aside and began talking to him in a hushed voice beneath the general murmur of the crowd, leaving Posey to stare curiously at the two as she tried in futility to pick up any snippets of the conversation. After a couple minutes that felt far too long to her the two graduates seemingly came to an agreement before motioning for her to follow them outside, which caused her curiosity to take on an edge of worry. It did not help matters when they took a moment looking around to confirm they were alone before Mannie started speaking to her in a very serious tone.
"Posey, I don't have the last of my medical training or my license to practice yet, but does my degree earn me a fair measure of trust with you?"
While she couldn't have claimed to know what exactly she had been expecting, she was sure it hadn't included such a question. She remained in silence, looking downward as her eyes switched their focus between random spots on the floor while her mind toiled in uncertainty. Her head rose and with a last glance towards her husband she answered. "I...guess that would kind of depend. What are we talking about here exactly?"
"Posey, I think Mannie can help us see our foal," Lance explained.
"What?!" Posey exclaimed prior to both Lance and Mannie making a subdued yet severe shushing noise.
------
His head reeled even more than usual. That had been a long one. Lance slumped back to a sitting position in the middle of the door frame attempting to soak in another round of pain in his head, eyes held tightly shut. This wasn't the backlash he'd felt from the memories back in the apartment, it was something new. Before it had felt like somepony else had taken a plank to his skull. Now the ache was radiating outward from within. The pain wasn't as severe as before but it was steady and grating instead of sharp and jostling. There was no way he could be sure if it was just his condition deteriorating or something...else, but either way it was not a good sign.
After the pain had subsided a bit Lance looked up to see the dirty cracked cement he had remembered instead of the latest instance of the increasingly intrusive door. It was becoming less and less like he was just stumbling upon it by coincidence and more like it was waiting in ambush for him...kind of exactly like the last note had warned him about. He would have to be careful with where he looked from now on. His condition was bad enough without also inviting periodic migraines on top of everything else.
That and he wasn't really interested in seeing what was coming next again. Quite repelled by the thought in fact.
He struggled back to his hooves and got on his way again, heading to the last bit of the area that was unexplored off to his right. The only door he could see ahead that looked accessible was opposite a left turn that he knew would lead him right back to the barbed nurse sentry. This made his next choice of direction rather obvious, but he supposed there was no reason he couldn't spare a quick leftward glance before going through the door.
There was a surgical lamp hanging from three wires that had been wrapped around a board nailed into the ceiling just before the corridor made another left turn into the section guarded by the nurse. It was the sort of light one would usually find mounted in the ceiling of an operating room to ensure the staff had sufficient light to work by. The wires kept it at about the height of an average pony's head, angled so that it would shine into the next bit of hallway were it turned on. A cable extending from the back of the light fed into a hole in the wall that looked to have been punched through by the same sledge hammer that had wrecked up the shower room.
Lance spent a moment just looking at it before the use of such a thing finally dawned on him, prompting him to limp his way over to examine it more closely. Both nurses he'd come across so far had been particularly attentive to his light, and had lost interest in pursuit when he had been in the dark. If he could get the light turned on it would likely lure the nurse away from the door she was guarding, allowing him to loop back and slip in with his light turned off. As he drew closer and was finally in hoof's reach he made sure to keep his light pointed in a direction that would not get the nurse's attention, the soft buzzing in his watch serving as a reminder of her presence.
Unfortunately for his plan there didn't seem to be anything in the way of a switch on the lamp. If there was some sort of switch inside the wall he wasn't getting at that one either since the hole was just a bit smaller than hoof size. From the looks of it the lamp was either powered and on, or unpowered and off, no switch involved. There was obviously no power in the wire then, something he could hardly be surprised about after spending so long with naught but his light to stave off the suffocating darkness all around him. Just another thing on his list to fix then. It would not be the first time he was forced to do menial labor in a hospital while his degree went unused.
Back to the door then. It was functional and unlocked but after opening it Lance found himself stuck standing in the open doorway anyway, staring ahead. The walls to the left and right were fine as far as abandoned, filthy hospitals went, but the far wall where this newest addition to the unbearable gauntlet of hallways took a right turn was another matter. It was neither wood nor concrete, looking instead like another wall of worn, rusted, scratched up metal straight out of the nightmarish architecture of the apartments, covered in a familiar pattern of black veins for good measure. For a split second Lance feared he was about to be plunged into a similarly awful place, but heard no siren in the distance, nor did his light flicker in the least, so he limped onward despite his reservations.
It quickly became apparent that this questionable section of wall wasn't part of the main building at all. Normally the space it occupied would house that floor's doctor's offices, but judging by the jagged edges of the floor and wall around it, they had been torn out and replaced by a steel box that resembled a vault. The formidable looking door he saw upon making his way around the corner only added to this image. Although he obviously couldn't tell how thick it was he could venture a guess that it was plenty thick, and a complement of horizontal metal rods fitted into a frame just in front of it served to complete the none too subtle hint that one might well look elsewhere. Lance couldn't help but also noticed the door's handle though...it was just a typical door handle with a keyhole beneath it on the right side, and actually looked fairly puny in comparison to the rest of it.
As had become his habit he reached up and tried turning the handle, resulting in an overwhelmingly predictable click.
Lance spent a moment looking at his own bandaged hoof as it lingered on the door while he came to grips with his latest lapse of pattern recognition. He let out a low grumbling sigh, placing his hoof on his forehead. "No, really, that was completely worth trying," he muttered sarcastically to himself.
"Lance?!"
His eyes opened wide, his ears perked, and his head shot up at the sound of the familiar voice. Turning quickly to the opposite wall he saw the lone unbarricaded door standing cracked open the slightest bit. Completely abandoning the caution that had kept him in a state that could arguably be called alive, he hobbled forward and pushed it open without a second of hesitation.
"Lance!"
It was Posey. She was on the other side of a barricade straight out of a prison's visiting room. The security in said prison must have been fairly lax though, as they were not forced to talk via an intercom, and there was even a slot in the bottom of the reinforced glass for the exchange of items. Lance gave a moment's thought to somehow breaking through the glass but there were already a few hoof marks where he assumed his wife had already tried bucking through it, and if she couldn't do it he sure as hay wasn't going to be able to either.
"I thought this was the floor you were on!" he said as he limped up to the glass barrier, finding it difficult to miss the abrupt shift in her mood. At first she had been quite happy to see him, but in the few moments it had taken him to cross the small visiting room her shining smile had quickly turned to a distraught frown. "Are...are you okay Posey?"
"Am...am I okay?!" she repeated incredulously, her eyes tearing up a noticeable bit. "Lance what happened to you?!" she half scolded, half wailed as she she continued taking in the even more damage state in which she found her husband.
"Oh...right..." Since last Posey had seen him he'd been tossed into a heavily breathing pin cushion, had his chest cut open, had been nearly drowned by somepony who had enjoyed doing so far too much, and that same somepony had been beating the tar out of him in general throughout both incidents. To put it lightly he imagined he was something of a sight. "Honey I...I..." he stammered, finding it hard to choose what to tell her first, or whether he should even tell her at all, especially the part where he'd been forced to swallow-
And just like that his mental quandary was resolved.
"I'm sorry, but can we talk about this later? I don't really know how I'm not whimpering in a corner somewhere right now, and I don't want to tempt fate by thinking about it," he said in complete honesty without further hesitation.
Posey gave a last sad sniff, and then closed her eyes before brushing off the gathered tears and giving a reluctant nod. "Okay...probably better to focus on getting out of here anyway right now," she said to herself more than anypony. She took a breath to let herself level off before continuing. "Um...so did the key help?"
"Yes, a lot, it was for the second elevator control room on the roof, I'd still be stuck going between the basement and that little section of the top floor if you hadn't found that," Lance replied.
"You might not have gotten even more hurt eith-"
"Posey," he interrupted firmly.
"Sorry," she relented with a sigh. "I got kind of antsy just waiting so I started looking under the heavier bits of furniture in here and found these." After opening her saddlebag and rummaging about for a moment she pulled out a pair of worn, dirty single bit coins and placed them in the slot, pushing them over to his side of the barrier.
"Two bits? What could I do with money here?" Lance asked, genuinely drawing a blank.
"I don't know, what could we have done with a bundle of four bolts when we found them?" she countered.
"Another good point." He took the offered bits and dropped them in his own bag, trying to trap them between two notes lest they both scatter and be nigh impossible to find later.
"And there's a switch on the wall behind you." She pointed over his shoulder towards the door. Lance turned expecting something like a light switch, which in retrospect was truly a triumph of hope over experience, only to instead see a more cumbersome looking toggle like one might find in a power plant. It was currently closed. "I have no idea what it does but it has to do something, right?"
He nodded before limping over and opening the toggle, breaking whatever circuit it was maintaining. They both looked back at the resultant sound of something on Posey's side of the barrier clattering open, apparently having lost power. "Well that's interesting," Lance mused, looking the toggle over.
"What is?"
"There's a light I need to turn on to distract a nurse on the other side of this floor but there's no power to-"
"A nurse?" Posey interrupted with a curiously furrowed brow.
"I'll tell you that later too. I just need that light on and there's no power to it, but this side of the floor is getting power just fine," he continued as he returned to the barrier.
"Huh...I guess this floor works on two fuses?" she suggested.
"Either that or some random wire in the wall is broken at Celestia knows what point. I like the fuse idea better though, let's go with that." It was a sensible choice really. If ripping open walls and tracing wires through the whole building was what would be required of him to get out, they were pretty much stuck there so it wasn't worth contemplating.
"So did you find anything useful on your side?" Posey asked, trying to check the progress on his end without prodding into the cause of his additional injuries that he was unwilling to discuss quite yet.
"Just a pipe and four keys. I know what the keys unlock and they're all on my side...but does the pipe sound useful to you?" Despite the pause he didn't sound reluctant to hand it over in the least should she need it, even though it was his only means of self defense.
It only took her a moment and a thoughtful glance back in the direction the clattering sound had come from to decide. "I don't know, but I want you to keep it anyway. I can still fly, but I can't protect you from here, so if one of us is going to have something solid to hit those monsters with I want it to be you."
"Okay," he said somewhat feebly, clearly remembering some of the recent events he would rather not ponder. The conspicuous look on his face prompted another curious expression on Posey's own. "I'll tell you about that later too," he said before she could ask.
She let her eyes drift downward and nodded wordlessly in reply. Neither of them spoke for a lengthy moment as she closed her eyes and took another deep breath, exhaling somewhat shakily before saying something Lance hadn't expected her to say. "I'm sorry I dragged the both of us into this Lance."
...
"Wh...what? You didn't drag us into this!" he denied adamantly.
"Yes I did. You were trying to tell me that we would be stuck down here and I didn't listen." She laid her head down on the small shelf in front of the barrier, still unable to look at him.
"You didn't listen because you were right. I would have come to the same conclusion you did Posey, only without you I'd just be trapped here forever because I never would have been able to turn on the other elevator. Don't apologize just for helping me honey, because that's what you're actually doing."
After a long pause she looked up at him again, that same sad look still in here eyes. His words clearly hadn't done much, and neither would hers. He was still just as much of a cut up, bruised, broken mess and she was still just as unable to do anything about it. She lifted her head off the table and blinked away another set of tears before speaking. "I'm going to go see what that noise was, probably more useful than sitting here losing my mind," she said, seemingly finished with useless apologies.
He gave another silent nod.
"Stay safe for me okay?" she pleaded as she backed away from the barrier and turned to depart.
"I'll try." That was about the best he could do for her. Following a second lengthy moment she was finally able to bring herself to let him slip from her sight again.
...
"Goddess I have to get her out of there," he said under his breath as he left the forlorn visiting room. She had been so confident when they first stumbled upon the buried hospital, but now it was cutting Lance to the quick to see her whither and blame herself more and more every time they met up. What was worse was that unlike the apartments where it had been clear he just needed to grab two keys, there was absolutely no goal in sight in this much larger, much more complex facility. It was becoming like a treadmill he had been stuck on for entirely too long, and he was forced to see Posey break down a little bit more with every step.
Enough of that then. This floor was clear and he hadn't seen a way to go down any further. The next logical step was heading back up to the top floor to see what was in Operating Room 2, especially considering how hazardous to his health obtaining the key had been. Surely there would be something worthwhile inside. He hobbled his way back out into the patient room area and headed left, passing by the bathing room that had nearly been his tomb and the mold infested shower room that was now distressingly gurney free once more. Opting not to think of where they might have gone he pressed onward back into the first hallway intending to reach the stairs and leave that place behind for the moment. But alas...there was another interruption that he noticed. It was the door to the day room on his right as he stood facing the exit into the stair well area. The lock had been broken earlier but now it stood partially open.
Five sets of trails in the dust were leading into the wall around it.
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Ermergerd!
Silent Ponyville updated again!!
DAMN YOU CLIFFHANGERS
Love love love.
Glad to see the update 17 :D
Poor Posey. I see whats coming, and it isn't pretty
Such delicious puzzles good sir. Were this a game, I would be crying, frustrated, and jumping out of my skin. Can't wait for more
updates Yay
so, you were alive all the time huh?
sadly, i have read silent ponyville 3, so i know what will happen.
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I should hope everyone here has read SP3! Sorry it has apparently made Reunion a bore for you though.
924540 not at all. it's still a fun read. a shame i know the truth about posey.
Oh hey, good to see this is on FimFiction. So much easier to track this story here.
Another solid story with some progression. Geez, how much more can Lance take before he just breaks down completely? I look forward to the next chapter!
1033212 oh that i already picked up on i dont think i even commented on that tho o.o oh wait you ment bounty above you right?? XD
*hasn't head SP3 yet*
Quick comment before moving to the next chapter:
I really like what you have done with Lance's character. You have developed a great story for him regarding his past considering what little bit you had to go on. Learning more about his past and seeing his memories makes me have more sympathy for him. Sure, he's committed terrible crimes, and in no way do I justify the things he did, but I can't help but feel sympathetic toward him. At this point in the story, he's still calloused against Fluttershy, but that is something that will change as he continues his descent into the twisted madness of Silent Ponyville. Everything he's ever done to hurt his daughter is coming back to bite him, HARD. If I recall correctly, now must face the Gurneys...
So much for a quick comment, lol. I shall continue rereading :)
God the anticipation for when all of lances lies come crashing down on him are killing me I want to know how he reacts to the truth or how he reacts if or when posey learns the truth. This story is so damn good I wish they did this as the next silent hill game instead of downpour. And sovereign is such an intense character and feels like she would be a real SH character. I wish there was a pic of what she looks like cuz I keep having trouble picturing her.
4812711 same here. I keep pictu
ring Celestia with Pyramid Head's helmet on. 