What Bound Them

by Headless

15: Choices

Following the argument with Colonel Reveille, Doctor Grey refused to involve herself with the group in anything more than a strictly professional capacity. She still checked in on each of them at least once per day, and Tailspin more than that, but she refused any conversation or interaction other than to check on their healing.

At least, Spike assumed that she refused interaction with all of them. He hadn't seen Compass Rose since she had convinced Doctor Grey to attempt her spell. The green-coated mare remained in her section of the infirmary, dividers closed on all sides. He could hear her pacing from time to time, and occasionally she perched on her cot, throwing her shadow against the curtain. But that was all. Other than the medical staff who walked in and out occasionally, sometimes carrying food and sometimes carrying stethoscopes and the like, no one had laid eyes on her since.

As a result, it was a surprise to all of them when, two days later, the unicorn suddenly pushed aside the dividers around their cots and took a seat next to Spike.

She had a sheaf of papers held in her mouth, which she set down with some care. Then, without saying a word, she began to spread them out over the available surface of the cot, studying each one carefully.

Spike stared at her for a few seconds. She had startled him out of his inspection of the device held in his claws. It was a watch, designed to be clipped onto one of the pockets of the jackets that the military personnel wore. Its face was unusual, depicting the sun and the moon as stationary in the center with a few prominent stars moving around them. He was just beginning to get the hang of telling time with it.

When she didn't look up, but instead set one paper down and pulled another towards herself, he looked up and quirked a brow at Pith and Tailspin.

The pegasus had attempted to walk a few more times over the past few days, but she had managed no more than a few shaky steps unassisted. They had stopped taking her outside to the yard for her attempts, so she didn't have as far to go to get back to her cot. She was always tired, now, even though she wasn't looking quite as skeletal as before. She spent most of her time sleeping.

Even when she was awake, she didn't have much energy for conversation. She mostly just lay on her cot and listened. More often than not, Pith stayed with her, and Spike had woken up in the middle of the "night" several times to find that she had fallen asleep against his chest. It seemed like they were both determined to stay as close to one another as possible for however long they had left.

They were like that again now. Pith was reclining against a small stack of pillows while Tailspin reclined against him. The cot was too small for it to possibly be comfortable, but they had been that way for hours and didn't show any signs of wanting to move. When Spike looked at them, Pith shrugged. Tailspin just watched Compass silently, looking concerned.

The dragon let out a short huff, then turned to look back at the unicorn. He was seated on one end of his cot, so she had room to spread out the papers that she was examining, but she was curled up uncomfortably on the end.

She did look as though she was improving physically. She had obviously gotten some sleep, as her muscles no longer twitched with overexertion, and her black eye had begun to fade somewhat. But her shattered horn still glittered jaggedly, and there was something flat and dead in the stare that she directed towards the papers.

The maps, he realized. Every one of the papers that the unicorn was looking at was a map. He reached out to pick one up, only to have Compass' hoof come down on it just before he actually made contact. She pulled it away, and he raised his eyes again. He was vaguely surprised to see her actually looking at him.

The black ring around her eye was fading, but her eyes themselves were still red. She had obviously been doing a lot of crying. But her gaze, despite its hollowness, was steady.

"Don't," she said flatly. "I'm trying to find out where this Canterlot place is."

Spike lifted his claw away, nodding slowly. "Do you need any help?"

Compass shook her head. Her eyes remained locked with his throughout the entire motion. "I can figure it out," she muttered, looking down again. "I saw the maps in your house. I just need to remember." One hoof prodded listlessly at a sheet of paper. "It's somewhere in that mountain range."

Spike frowned slightly. "I thought maps were your special talent," he said, confused. "Can't you rememb-"

"No, I can't remember perfectly from a map that I saw for five minutes!" snapped Compass. Her head swung up abruptly, and she turned a glare on him that was only made worse by the tears he could see building up. "Maps are my special talent, but I used to have magic to help with them, too, you know. Spells for comparisons and spells for finding distances, spells for landmark memorization, spells for... for everything. I could have this all figured out in two seconds if I still had those, but I don't any more, so I have to sit here and stare at these damn papers and try to keep myself from forcing the spells, because the last time I tried, the pain was so bad I blacked out!"

There was a ringing silence for a few seconds. Then, slowly, she lowered her gaze and shut her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet and small. "I'm sorry. I just... I'm not very happy right now."

Spike half-lifted one claw. When he had been younger, and still lived with Twilight Sparkle in the Ponyville library, she had always been there to comfort him when he was upset with a gentle touch or a hug. When he had married Rarity, the two of them had shared that same sort of connection. There was some sort of comfort in simple physical contact. That was probably part of why Pith and Tailspin were so close to one another.

But Compass seemed to flinch away from his touch before he had even really moved towards her. Her whole body was a flinch. She was curled up on herself, and the thousand-yard stare she wore made it clear that she was hurt. But she didn't move towards him, or towards the other two, or even look at them. She seemed to want to be left alone.

But she had come to them, rather than the other way around.

"Sorry," Spike muttered. "It, uh, was a stupid thing to say anyway."

"No, it wasn't," Compass said, shaking her head. "It's what I'm supposed to be able to do. I'm the mare with the maps. But now I can't do it any more." She lowered her head to the cot, eyes shut. "The doctors said you want me to go with you, but there's nothing I can do to help. I'm a unicorn that can't use magic. I'm no good to anyone."

The dragon opened his mouth to say something, but stopped when he heard Tailspin whisper, "I'm a pegasus who can't fly."

Compass' eyes opened, and she lifted her head to turn a worried frown on the speaker. "What are you talking about? Your wings-"

"Are about as useless as my legs right now," Tailspin interjected. Her voice was set and firm, but her expression was gentle. Spike could almost see her as Colonel Reveille, if Reveille could only speak at a whisper. "I can't even walk without help right now. I can't imagine flying. And this spell you made for me could give out at any time. I could drop dead before I finish my next sentence for all anyone knows."

Pith frowned heavily as she said it, and Spike saw his forelegs pull her in a little closer, but Tailspin didn't stop. "And we don't know if I'll ever get better. I can't offer anything to anybody right now, but I'm going anyway, because I'm needed." She lifted one hoof and pointed towards Compass. "And so are you. You're one of us. It doesn't matter if you can use your magic any more or not. We want you with us because you're our friend, and you matter."

She smiled and let her hoof fall back to the cot. "Besides," she finished, "you've still got a good head for maps, even if you can't use all those spells to help any more. We'll need that. We're a bunch of cripples who only have the job because everyone else is too busy fighting a war." She sniggered quietly, and Spike couldn't keep a brief smile from crossing his features.

Compass let out a long sigh and straightened up slowly. Her eyes were still glistening with tears, but she at least smiled at Tailspin. "Thank you," she said quietly. She looked back down to the maps and began shuffling them about with one hoof again. "I just wish there were more to go on."

"Yeah," Spike said. "I wanted to ask about that, actually. The Everfree Forest is gone. It's the Tangle now. Canterlot used to be a huge city built into the side of a mountain, but I'm guessing it's not that easy to find any more. What's out there?" He leaned over to peer at the papers.

On the maps that he had kept back in Carousel Boutique, Canterlot had rested in the center of Equestria, resting on a mountain range that extended far to the west. Ponyville was a ways to the south, with the Everfree Forest just beyond. On these maps, there was no sign of any of them. The Tangle filled the vast majority of the available space, and around its western and northern edges was a collection of areas marked with the names of different forts.

Other than that, there wasn't much that he could make out. The maps were a collection of unlabeled symbols in apparently random positions. He couldn't make head or tail of it.

"We don't really know," Compass admitted. She pushed one of the maps towards him. It was full of markings that were obviously meant to represent mountains, but all of them were surrounded by hoofwritten notations about errors in positioning or size. "Nopony's attempted to map them yet. Or, at least, if they did, they didn't do a very good job of it."

Spike picked up the paper and squinted at it. "Why is there so little information on it?"

The unicorn gave him a sidelong look. "Because," she said slowly, "while you were asleep, things apparently went bad. I know you want details, but nopony has details, because all those landmarks that were on your maps are pretty much gone, with all the information they might have had with them." She shook her head. "Our records don't go very far back, and most of the places that we haven't investigated haven't been investigated because they're too dangerous."

Spike sighed and set the map down again. "Right," he said. "The Ev- the Tangle is full of hostile plants and changelings, there's the fog to the north, and... what's in these mountains?"

"Magic," said a new voice.

Captain Long Road was shutting the curtains behind him as he stepped into their makeshift room. When Pith and Tailspin attempted to salute, he waved a hoof at them dismissively. "You don't need to do that," he said. "I'm not here as your commanding officer. You two are pretty much working on your own now." He glanced at Spike and Compass, then added, "Or not quite on your own. Whatever."

He shook his head and removed his olive cap, then turned to Spike. "I'm actually here to talk to you," he said, looking serious.

Spike blinked. "Me?" He glanced back and forth between Pith and the captain for a moment. Pith seemed just as confused as he felt. "Why me? I'm not-"

"Not a scout, no," said the captain. He sighed and tossed his cap onto the end of the cot that Pith and Tailspin were laying on. "But somepony needs to talk to you, and the other two aren't going to do it, so that leaves me." He gave a slightly embarrassed smile.

Spike studied him closely for a few seconds. Long Road was obviously younger than Colonel Reveille or Doctor Grey, but his exact age was hard to guess. He lacked any streaks of grey in his orange coat, but he did have several pronounced lines on his face.

"What did you want to talk about?" he asked.

Road gave a heavy, almost theatrical sigh, then lowered himself onto his haunches. "It's about your mission," he said slowly. "Or, uh, more accurately, about the opposite of your mission."

Spike stared, and the officer, to his surprise, squirmed on the spot. He looked more than a little nervous. "Look," he said eventually. "I want to ask you to not go."

"What?" Spike had been expecting a number of things - more questions about what the Elements of Harmony were, perhaps, or an attempt to persuade him to leave the others behind. This was not one of the possible conversations his brain had been preparing for, and it threw him for a momentary loop.

The captain scratched his mane with one hoof, not quite making eye contact. "I'm not exactly here for myself," he continued. "Or, well, not just for myself. I'm here for the colonel as well. I know I don't have the authority to order you, and I wouldn't even if I could, because I honestly don't know which choice would be the better one. But it's something that we've been talking about, and I think it needs to be said, at least."

"Think what needs to be said?" Spike tilted his head to one side, waiting for an explanation.

"That you could probably save more lives here than wandering around in the mountains," said Road. Finally, he lifted his eyes to look directly at Spike, his expression somber. "I know you want to find these Element things, but we've got no assurance that they'll actually be there. You could just be wasting your time. Whereas, if you stayed here... well, you're a dragon." He grinned. "According to Pith, you're scary when you want to be. You could save a lot of ponies."

The dragon blinked. The thought hadn't really occurred to him previously. He had been so consumed with the idea of searching for the Elements - and, with them, Twilight Sparkle - that no other possibilities had even entered his mind.

To buy himself time to think, he said, "I thought Colonel Reveille didn't trust me. He acts like he doesn't want me around."

Long Road gave a short, mirthless laugh. "Rev is... odd," he said. "Hard to get a handle on if you don't know him. The thing about him is that he's actually very simple. He considers him a commander first and foremost, and that means he thinks he's responsible for two things, and those two things control everything he says and does." He stamped a hoof. "He's responsible for the lives of his personnel, and he's responsible for the lives of the ponies this fort protects. Those two things override everything else for him, in terms of what choices he makes."

"So?"

"So," the captain said, waving a hoof, "the thing is, he wants to trust you. He wants to believe we've got a dragon on our side. He even wants to believe you can find these Element things and beat the changelings once and for all. But he can't, because he's in charge, so he's not allowed to just take you at your word. If he could, he'd send every available stallion off on this trip with you. If he didn't want to trust you, he wouldn't have come down on the doc so hard for you to get what you think you need."

He winced. "That hurt him. Rev doesn't make friends easily, you know. The doc and me are the only two ponies he talks to, and now she won't even look at him. But he did it because he wants to help you." He set his hoof down and sighed. "He's giving you every bit of help he can without actively jeopardizing the lives of the people he's supposed to protect, and it's hurting him bad to do it, because command is starting to think he's off his rocker and one of his only two friends in the world is tee'd off like I've never seen."

Spike squinted. "So why is he doing all this, if it's that bad?"

"Because he wants you to be right." Long Road's voice had the tone of a schoolteacher explaining something to a stubbornly ignorant pupil now. "He wants you to be right so bad it hurts. He wants you to come back carrying those Elements and make his job obsolete, so he doesn't have to send soldiers out there to die any more. But at the same time, he's scared to death that he's doing the wrong thing, that you're not going to find anything and he'll have thrown away one of the best weapons we could ever possibly find against the changelings for no reason." He frowned. "He doesn't know whether or not he's made the right choice, but he's going to stick to the one he made until the end, because that's what he does. He can't just come in here and ask you to stay and fight after everything that's happened so far. So I'm here to do it for him."

This time, Spike couldn't think of anything to say in reply. He just stared at the captain without really seeing him. His gaze was elsewhere.

The changelings were massing over the Tangle, and Queen Chrysalis was angry. There was a very real and very immediate threat here. Even though he couldn't see it from within the infirmary, ponies were dying every hour to try and avert it, or at least to gather enough information to allow for an adequate defense. When things finally reached their boiling point, when Chrysalis' swarm reached critical mass, it would get even worse.

He could remember the feeling of fire, of having the strength to crush solid granite in his talons. He remembered the smell of burning chitin and the fine ash that resulted. He could remember the sheer, animal joy of hurting the ones he hated so much.

The acidic festering sensation in his wounds brought him out of those memories just long enough for him to look at the others. They were all watching him, waiting for his decision.

If he stayed here, he could blunt this attack. Maybe he could even defeat it completely. But it was just one attack. If he did find the Elements of Harmony, he could do so much more. He could drive Chrysalis away once and for all.

And if he continued his search, he could continue hoping that he would find Twilight Sparkle.

It's just you and me, Spike. You and me, forever.

Slowly, he shook his head.

"No," he rumbled, lowering his gaze. "I'm sorry. I understand why you're asking, but even if I can help here, I have to at least try this. If I'm right, I can help so much more than by fighting on the front lines. And the sooner I find the Elements, the sooner we can beat the changelings for good."

Captain Long Road just nodded solemnly. "I thought you would say that," he answered. "But somepony had to at least ask. I hope you're right about this just as much as Rev does. I just don't know if it'll be worth it, in the end." He reached out and scooped up his cap, then stood up and rammed it onto his head.

"Like I said," he continued, as if the previous conversation hadn't occurred, "those mountains are full of magic. Stuff there doesn't work the way it should, and there are things there that are even more dangerous than changelings. Weird things. Spirits that can mess with your head, wild spells bouncing around and causing havoc, storms that never die out. It's not a safe place. I wish you all the luck in the world."

"Thank you," said Spike. There was an odd, leaden feeling in his stomach as he watched the captain smile at him.

"The next shipment of supplies arrives in eight hours," said Road. "Your travel equipment will be here then. I suggest you all get some sleep. You'll be wanting to leave early."

And he turned to trot out, closing the divider behind him.

When he had left, the other three turned to Spike. "We're still with you," said Tailspin quietly. Pith and Compass each nodded.

"I know," he murmured. He couldn't keep the worried frown off of his face. "I just hope we're making the right choice."

"We're doing the best we can," said the pegasus. "It's all anybody can ask for. And you're right. We can save even more ponies if we can find the Elements."

Spike nodded mutely, not looking at her. "We should get some sleep," he said after a moment. "We'll be leaving soon."

As he pulled the sheets over himself and tried to ignore the burning sensation from his wounds, he heard the words echoing around his head.

We can save even more...

But the only pony whose face he could see when he closed his eyes was Twilight Sparkle.

Comments

[TheMessenger]

Oh geez, this can't end well. It doesn't seem likely that the Elements would be in Canterlot and if/when they come back empty-handed...

Gah, now to wait in suspense. How do you find the time to churn out chapters so quickly?

[MustacheMerlin]

For some reason this got me thinking about where the other dragons would be right now. I think there are two main places you'd find them, Canterlot, and the Crystal Empire. Those are the places they would thrive best in, considering their resistance to magic and the massive amount of gemstones in each place. They would fall into two camps too, the younger more agressive ones in the Crystal Empire who just want to fight something, probably working as mercenaries for whoever is in charge there, and the older wiser ones who are avoiding the war with all their power, knowing that it would probably mean the extinction of their race. There might even be a third group, more dragons like Spike who are completely unaware of the whole situation, just sleeping with their hordes.

[The Cynical One]

This story is written so well I’m speechless. Onwards I guess.

[TheGreatSako]

If he stayed here, he could blunt this attack. Maybe he could even defeat it completely. But it was just one attack. If he did find the Elements of Harmony, he could do so much more. He could drive Chrysalis away once and for all.

Why didn't he kill her when he had the chance?

He hasn't even thought back on it, either. He just decided to not end her when he had her in his grasp, and is apparently at peace with that decision.