To Cure Deception

by LegionPothIX

Act 2 | Bed, Bath, and Beyond a Single Sunrise

Author's Note:

What is history?

The eyes of the changeling drifted open in the face of the morning sun with its light, in turn, in his face. His eyelids fluttered as he tried in vain to scrub the nightmarish images from them. Though the dream itself was fleeting from his mind in the warm rays he still couldn't help but feel that he'd had it before. It was the same feeling he had yesterday morning in the hospital. He could remember an explosion preceding a long fall, and that he wasn't afraid in the dream, just… very sad. The emotion lingered for minutes more as Lacus looked around.

Home.

A place he couldn't even remember existing yesterday. The experience as a whole felt like another terrible dream, and he relegated himself to believing it was, until he saw Zecora’s borrowed saddle bags on the floor next to his nightstand, where an empty ceramic jar sat for the herbal bath he'd had. His mattress, the one he was now struggling to crawl off of, was itself encased in changeling gel that he slept atop of, rather than inside.

His mind raced with all that he had seen upon arriving home last night. His mailbox read Lucas Greymane and Habré Kadabré. He, or rather they, had a welcome mat in front of their little house. On which rested two newspapers, both Sunday editions, and under it a key to the door. There had been a framed quote by the door that reminded, "She who loves is loved in return." and Lacus attributed it to Habré's odd sense of humor.

She had claimed the day before that they were in a squad together, and all evidence seemed to support that claim. There were two open envelopes on his nightstand, and he moved the jar aside to get at them. Renewed, and refreshed from a good night's sleep, and cured of his Poison Joke, he could finally try to tackle this curious evidence.

The first piece of evidence, invitation to the coronation of Princess Twilight Sparkle that had past a few days ago. Though it was addressed to Habré Kadabré, and not him specifically, he was sure that every pony in Ponyville likely received such an invitation. The other was an order indicating that H.K. was going to be reassigned to cover the event in its entirety. Though he was sure she visited him in the Everfree Forest, he was also certain Twilight Sparkle was in town at the time too, but he couldn't be sure if that was still true as of now. Additionally, according to the invitation, the celebrations were still ongoing in Canterlot, which would indicate Twilight’s return would have been temporary.

As he rummaged through them, a small note fell from the orders’ envelope. Confused, as he thought that the envelope had been empty, he picked it up and read it aloud. “The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves. - HSB L.V.” Lacus wondered to whom the attribution was dedicated to, and no sooner did the thought cross his mind, than he heard a crash in the house.

***

“How the hell could you know?” The feminine words were a whimper in the dark of night.

Lacus offered a sad smile as he tried to comfort the wounded changeling. “Because the first lesson cannot be taught. It must be learned by each pony in their own way,” Lacus’s recitation came in frightened whispers that fell to Habré’s bloodied ears. He had never seen her so vulnerable, and her situation was a delicate one; both in mind and body.

He had once asked her to teach him first aid, in the event that he should hurt himself during her lessons, but now it was his instructor who was in need. Lacus cauterized her wounds, unable to truly offer proper healing, while Habré looked to him, bearing with it for the truth. Even the pain of searing her skin shut couldn't deter her. The attentive intentness of her stare told all: that, for the first time, it would seem Lacus knew something that even she hadn't figured out. She was visibly waiting with baited breath for even a hint at what that thing was.

Rather than keep her in suspense, he tried to explain: “I know that you really believed this spell would work, and I wanted it to be true, but…” his voice trailed off as his focus on the magical repairs became more intense. Even he knew the treatment was insultingly basic compared to what she could accomplish were it not for her injuries.

Habré’s grit her teeth so hard that her gums bled; in addition to the blood already coming from everywhere else. “But what?” she returned in a low growl.

The blood in her spittle flew into his face as she spoke, but he paid it no mind as he desperately tried knitting bone and mending muscles. “The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves.” The mentor's quotation was followed by a brief pause with intense eye contact. Lacus had to know that she understood this painful lesson before her hubris could kill her. The moment ended with a cringe brought on by surging agony of the preceding events. All while knowing that if he could just get her stabilized then she could do the rest.

***

Shell-shocked by the experience, Lacus inspected the reverse side of the note, and read it aloud. “Don’t be a fucking idiot. - HSB H.K.” He found himself somewhat relieved, as if it couldn't have said anything else. With that, he pulled open the drawer and placed the note inside for posterity. Inside, another file already lay, the title read HSB-D:LS/G. Lacus slowly withdrew the folder, intent on finding the meaning, or perhaps even his own assignment history, to refresh his memory. He reasoned the LS/G was his initials, and that of his alias, both having the first initial L for Lacus Sceleratus and Lucas Greymane respectively. He opened the folder to find that the contents were surprisingly disappointing.

“Deferred,” he read aloud from a solitary square of sticky note, the quillmanship faded to the point of near illegibility. It was decidedly different than that of H.K. and his own, but matched the other note perfectly. It was as if somepony had gone out of their way to mess with him.

Lacus stuffed the empty folder back into the night stand and slammed the drawer shut. He was constantly being reminded that not everything was what it seemed, and that fact was beginning to get under his skin. With Habré tailing Twilight, he wondered if another changeling had been sent to fill his partner’s horseshoess. If so: they had a sick sense of humor. With this in mind Lacus proceeded to search the house for any indications of a replacement, but the only clues he found were that certain effects were conspicuously missing– such as a painting, and any indication of the incident between Habré and himself.

He gave thought to Zecora's own cautions, and with heightened apprehensions he instead took to the street to clear his mind, preferring not to entertain such outlandish claims. The cool morning air was refreshing, and the sun’s light was glinting off the mail box, its morning east-born rays traced out a westward shadow.

***

As the door closed behind Lacus, Habré’s voice could be heard over his shoulder as they stood together on the porch. “Bitch morning?” Her concern seemed genuine as she asked, but it was growing increasingly difficult for Lacus to tell anymore, and that alone was progress in his eyes.

“You could say that,” he replied, while adding “I think I found the catalyst, but I’ll need you to do some further research on it.”

“Wait,” Habré asked with a stilted pause, “You mean that shitty weed?”

As Lacus nodded, a lock of hair swept back behind a metallic hairband broke loose. The wheat-gold mane'd earth pony and her unicorn roommate had just disembarked from their home as mail was arriving. A walleyed mailmare was struggling to fit an extra large envelope into their regular-sized box.

“I’ll just…” Habré began a sentence that finished itself as the envelope began floating away from the letter carrier, and with it came a regal invitation.

A gracious “Thanks!” was offered by the bubbly grey pegasus as she took to the air, her satchel filled to bursting with similarly celestially-stamped envelopes. The sandy-tan unicorn demonstrated a visible change in countenance as she read the correspondence. After the mailmare was safely out of earshot, Habré began cursing under her breath, and her shattered-shale mane bristled with each syllable of sarcasm.

“Oh, for fucks sake,” her mutterance was issued in irreverence toward the invitation. What she in turn discarded was an invitation to the coronation of Princess Twilight Sparkle. It was followed by the tearing of manila and another groan that put a smile on Lacus’s face. “You are fucking kidding me,” her gripe was drawn out as to create the implied connection with the invitation. “The Evolution Institute, in their fucking infinite wisdom, have chosen me to shadow Twilight with a DNE recon mission during this dumbass event.”

The sour tone was more than enough for Lacus to know why this was a problem. A prestigious assignment for any other changeling, would prove most difficult for H.K. due to the level of formality implied by an envelope containing the words ‘cordially invited’. But, here was more to it than that. There was also the do-not-engage part, because she had become more impulsive from her previous mentor’s teachings. “So we’re going?” Lacus asked. They both knew that shadowing Twilight had been a large portion of Habré’s past assignments.

“Fuck no. Not ‘we’. Me.” Her voice resounded with a childish level of exasperation. “Fucking Canterlot,” she groaned as she opened the door again to take the news inside. The word was less of a place, as it was a time in the Changeling vernacular. “Just sit tight, and for fucks sake while I’m gone don’t be a fucking idiot, or get yourself fucking killed, or any other stupid shit like that.”

The implication that Habré was less than subtle about making was that she didn’t want to come back to find her hurt. This brought a smile to Lacus’s face, before she offered a cajoling: “Oh you know me.”

Habré paused in the doorway to consider the implications of the statement, leading up to her jesting response, “I’ll go write you a goddamn reminder then.” As she trailed off to do so the door closed in her wake.

***

Lacus bolted headlong into the closed door of his own home, before wrestling it open again in a frenzy. It was too early for mail to arrive, and Habré was nowhere to be found when he searched the house earlier. Searching the house a second time would prove to reinforce these findings, and Lacus stood in the living room flabbergasted. Twice, in twice as many minutes, she had simply arrived and departed without any explanation.

Unless… Lacus debated the nature of his amnesia, were they memories of the events that transpired here? These events from his past were different from mere recollections, rather it was as if he was reliving them with no control over when or how they played out. Each choice therein felt as natural as when he made them initially.

He thought it would be nice to be finally remembering things, but this wasn't remembering. Being forced to recall such a wretched day, and for what? His mind turned back to his the zebra's tale, and wondered if his fate was etched into the mind of another. Was the future as predictable as the past was reviewable? To what end would doing this serve, and what would cluing him in on the process achieve?

These questions troubled him greatly. So much so that he was nearly able to forget what was staring him in the face. He no longer had the luxury of setting aside the zebra's warnings, and though it sickened him to think it, he wondered if Habré Kadabré was being used by her mentor to get at him. The sickness was compounded by the final note in the third party handwriting left on his do-to board for today.

“The painting holds the truth?” Lacus cryptically read to himself as he left the house for the second time this morning. One thing was certain: he knew that he did not have the expertise to find out what was truly going on. Not alone, anyway. Seeking out a second opinion, he made his way to the hospital, and so long as he didn't let them run any tests that may reveal his anatomy, he figured that he should be fine. That is, if his mind would hold together long enough to make sense of it.